Africa Business

Brandishing sticks, parents and children blocked the path of other parents with children trying to get to classrooms for the start of the school year. Police were deployed to prevent the angry confrontation from getting out of hand.

Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is no stranger to conflict, but this year even the simple act of going back to school has been freighted with recrimination and division.

This scene played out on Monday in Rutshuru territory in North Kivu province — the epicentre of clashes pitching government forces and UN peacekeepers against a militia called the M23.

The conflict has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, creating a crisis that now ricochets across many sectors, especially lodging and education.

Rugabo school, like others visited by an AFP team on Monday, had been used to house displaced families during the long school break.

Now that September had come, those people were under pressure to vacate the classrooms so that local children could go back to school.

Yet at the same time, their own children were unable to enrol for class — a double grievance that prompted the bitter protest.

“They are turfing us out of the schools so that children who live in central Rutshuru can go to class, while our children are deprived of education,” said Mapendo Ruziki, a 40-year-old displaced mother of three, who joined the protest.

“What makes their children so special?” she asked.

“It’s shameful! Our children have to be educated, like the children of those in power and those in other parts of the country,” exclaimed Gisele Bikweto, a 39-year-old mother of four, carrying the youngest on her back.

– ‘Nowhere to go’ –

Inside the school, the desks had been broken up to provide frames for mosquito nets for bedroom areas for displaced families. 

Efforts to resume classes were put on hold as the local authorities attempted to figure out a solution.

“We are currently looking at ways by which schoolchildren from central Rutshuru attend class in the morning and displaced (schoolchildren) go in the afternoon,” said Luc Bakole Nyengeke, the territory’s military administrator.

But a big problem, he admitted, was getting displaced families to leave the schools during daytime so that the classrooms could be used.

“This is where we live, because we have nowhere else to go. This classroom is our home,” said Fabiola Nyarahabwa, who took part in the protest.

“If they turn us out of here, where do we go? We don’t want to sleep out in the open, we have been displaced by war.” 

– Rebel crisis –

A Congolese Tutsi group, the M23, is one of scores of armed groups that roam eastern DR Congo, many of them a legacy of two full-blown wars in the region in the last decade of the 20th century.

The group, whose full name is March 23 Movement, first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured the city of Goma before a joint Congolese-UN offensive drove it out.

After lying mostly dormant for years, the rebels resumed fighting late last year, seizing the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June and prompting thousands of people to flee their homes.

“We want Bunagana and our villages to be freed so that our kids can also go back to school,” said a woman who gave her name as Elizabeth, a leader of displaced people at a stadium where more than 450 families have been given shelter.

“I’ve got five children — how are they going to study if there’s no peace?” asked Jonas Semutaga, a 62-year-old man dressed in an old grey jacket.

“The Congolese state has to end this war so that we can go back to our villages and let our children go back to school,” said Alexis Senga, one of those displaced.

“All children have the same rights,” he said. “Our children also have the right to education.”

Scores of civilians were killed in political clashes in South Sudan between February and May this year, a UN report said Tuesday, with women and children subjected to brutal assaults, including gang rape.

The clashes between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, in oil-rich Unity State affected at least 28 villages across three counties, with 173 people killed and 37 women and children kidnapped.

“Many of the abductees were subjected to sexual violence, including girls as young as eight-years-old and a nine-year-old girl who was gang-raped to death,” the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.

Both sides committed severe abuses, the report said, adding that pro-government forces and militias loyal to Kiir appeared to be “the main perpetrators of the human rights violations”.

The violence caused 44,000 people to flee their homes across 26 villages, with a total of 131 cases of rape and gang-rape documented. 

South Sudan has been wracked by instability since independence in 2011 and is still struggling to draw a line under a civil war between pro-Kiir and pro-Machar fighters that claimed the lives of almost 400,000 people.

The joint report covered the period between 11 February and 31 May 2022, with researchers travelling to the pro-Machar strongholds of Koch, Leer, and Mayendit as well as surrounding areas to document the aftermath of the violence. 

It said that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were consistently premeditated and carried out with a degree of organisation mainly by the joint Government forces and allied militias/groups operating in these areas.”

In a press statement accompanying the report’s release, Nicholas Haysom, the UN envoy to the country, said that “human rights violations were committed with impunity.”

“The government is duty-bound under international law to protect civilians, investigate allegations of human rights violations, and hold suspected perpetrators accountable,” he added.

The UN has regularly criticised South Sudan’s leadership for its role in stoking violence, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers.

It has also accused the government of rights violations amounting to war crimes over deadly attacks in the southwest last year.

Since the five-year civil war ended in 2018, the country’s lumbering peace process has run into multiple delays, with violence regularly breaking out between Kiir and Machar’s forces.

In July, the United States pulled out of two peace process monitoring organisations in South Sudan due to the government’s failure to meet reform milestones, citing a “lack of sustained progress”.

For almost seven months, students in federal government-owned universities in Nigeria have been stuck at home, forced out of class by a protracted strike by staff.

The protest over pay, welfare and crumbling facilities by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has shut down universities since February 14 in the latest industrial action by the country’s public sector workers.

After several extensions to give the government time to meet their demands, the union’s leadership last week declared an indefinite strike in public universities across Africa’s most populous nation. 

The latest strike is the second longest by ASUU, known for its work stoppages. In 2020, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Nigerian university teachers went on strike for nine months — the longest in the nation’s history.

Parents and students are now getting desperate with no sign of the strike ending after more than 200 days.

“I have now wasted two academic sessions because of the incessant strikes by ASUU,” lamented 20-year-old Emmanuel Odunayo, a first-year physics student at Obafemi Awolowo University in southwest Nigeria.

“I lost one academic session in 2020 as a result of the nine months ASUU strike and now am on the verge of losing another,” he said.

He appealed to the striking lecturers to return to work “because their action is putting our future in jeopardy”.

Nigeria, with 36 states and the federal capital territory Abuja, has scores of universities owned by local state governments or the private sector not affected by the shutdown as membership of ASUU is voluntary.

The ASSU’s national executive committee said the strike aimed to “save public universities from collapsing” and that the strike would be extended because of the government’s failure to meet its demands.

“NEC resolved to transmute the roll-over strike to a comprehensive, total and indefinite strike action,” ASUU president Emmanuel Osodeke said in a statement.

Osodeke urged students and parents to bear with the teachers in their fight for better conditions.

The demands, like in previous strikes, are the same — higher pay, improved welfare, increased funding and upgraded facilities.

– Temporary work, crimes –

Local newspapers have been filled with reports of students forced to take desperate measures as a result of the strike, including becoming involved in cybercrime, prostitution and robberies.

Nigeria’s youth are already facing nearly 20 percent inflation, a weakening naira currency and double-digit unemployment figures.

Students complain of having to spend more years in class before graduating and getting jobs, owing to frequent strikes by their teachers.

In one tragic case, Racheal Opadele, a female university student in southwest Nigeria, was kidnapped along with her hotelier boss while doing a temporary job. 

They, along with a motorcycle rider, were killed by their abductors after collecting ransom money.

Her grieving mother Grace Opadele said her 21-year-old daughter would have been in school if not for the ASUU strike.

“I want the government to find a permanent solution to the problem of ASUU. I am not seeking justice; I am not interested in any case; the government should just address insecurity and the problem in the education sector,” she said.

Lagos parent Wale Oni called for prompt resolution of the dispute for fears a lack of study and opportunities may push desperate students into crime.

“An idle hand is the devil’s workshop,” he said.

The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), the umbrella body for students, has called on ASUU to end the protest.

“We met with the executive secretary of the NUC (National University Commission) and the minister of labour who told us that 85 percent of their demands have been met,” NANS leader Asefon Sunday said.

He said it was regrettable the ASUU insisted on being paid for the period of the strike, a request already rejected by the government.

The government has invited chancellors and chairmen of governing councils of federal universities to a meeting in Abuja next Tuesday in a bid to resolve the dispute.

In a meeting with governors of the ruling APC party on Tuesday, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo called for a truce.

“We all need to work together on these critical issues,” he said. “We need to think through things, and we need to do it fast.”

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld William Ruto’s victory in the August 9 presidential election, capping weeks of uncertainty as weary citizens voiced relief over a peaceful conclusion to the prolonged political process.

“This is a unanimous decision. The petitions are hereby dismissed, as a consequence we declare the first respondent (Ruto) as president-elect,” Chief Justice Martha Koome said.

The verdict dealt a blow to challenger Raila Odinga who had alleged fraud and filed a petition against the poll outcome, which saw Deputy President Ruto scrape to victory by a margin of less than two percentage points in a tightly fought race.

Although voting day passed off peacefully, observers feared that the disputed outcome could fuel violence in a country with a history of post-poll unrest, with over 1,100 people killed in politically motivated clashes in 2007.

Ruto struck a conciliatory note, promising to extend “a hand of brotherhood” to his rivals, including Odinga, a veteran opposition leader now backed by outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta and the ruling party.

“I extend a hand of brotherhood to all my competitors and to all their supporters. We are not enemies, we are Kenyans,” Ruto, 55, said.

“Our election and judicial institutions have won.”

Ruto will be sworn in on September 13, becoming Kenya’s fifth president since independence from Britain in 1963 and taking the reins of a country beset by inflation, high unemployment and a crippling drought.

As Ruto supporters celebrated, Odinga, 77, said he respected the ruling but disagreed with its substance.

“We have always stood for the rule of law and the constitution. In this regard, we respect the opinion of the court although we vehemently disagree with their decision today,” he said in a statement.

Kenyatta, who had a bitter falling-out with his former deputy in recent years, said he would “oversee a smooth transition to the next administration”, but pointedly did not congratulate Ruto.

– ‘We don’t want trouble’ –

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement congratulated Ruto and commended Odinga and other candidates for abiding by the court ruling.

“ Transparent electoral processes and the peaceful adjudication of disputes are testaments to the strength of democratic institutions,” he said.

The results’ announcement last month had sparked angry protests in Odinga strongholds, but there was no sign of violence on Monday.

In his lakeside bastion of Kisumu, messages calling for peace were plastered on walls and pinned to poles as police patrolled the streets.

“We don’t want trouble because we have realised we are the ones who suffer,” said Nelima Atieno, a seller of second-hand clothes. 

Minibus driver Kevin Omolo echoed her views, telling AFP: “We don’t want people to demonstrate.”

“We can’t change the verdict even though it is painful.”

Judges spent the last two weeks sifting through boxes of evidence to establish if any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify the election, as was the case with the August 2017 presidential poll, which Odinga also challenged.

Koome said the technology used by the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) met the standards of “integrity, verifiability, security and transparency”.

Any “irregularities were not of such magnitude as to affect the final results of the presidential election”, she said, dismissing all the claims made by the petitioners.

Odinga’s 72-page petition alleged hackers broke into IEBC servers and uploaded doctored result forms, but the court said there was no evidence to back the claim.

– ‘We just want jobs’ –

In several towns, the verdict sparked celebrations among Ruto supporters, who cheered and banged plastic buckets.

“I am filled with joy,” said Hassan Barre, a Ruto voter in the northeastern town of Garissa.

“We know the lives of Kenyans will be better… all those who are at the bottom will be uplifted. Businesses will flourish and food prices will go down.”

In Nairobi, stony-faced Odinga supporters expressed their disappointment, with a group of women telling AFP: “Not all of us are happy.”

But with the economy in the doldrums, many Kenyans said they were relieved to see an end to the political drama.

“This announcement enables us to move on (with our lives)”, said Caroline, a 30-year-old flower seller in the capital.

“We just want jobs,” she told AFP.

Analysts said any protests were unlikely to lead to prolonged unrest.

“The unanimity of the legal ruling and the ongoing economic crisis will dampen the appetite for conflict,” said Ben Hunter, Africa analyst at risk intelligence group Verisk Maplecroft. 

Murithi Mutiga, the International Crisis Group’s programme director for Africa, said on Twitter that “the biggest winner of the Kenyan election is the Kenyan people”.

“From a time when elections were a life and death affair, now they are routine.”

Despite losing the presidential vote, Odinga’s Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya coalition boasts a narrow majority in the lower house of parliament.

Since 2002, no presidential poll outcome in Kenya has gone uncontested, with Odinga previously claiming to have been cheated of victory in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 polls.

The United Nations warned Monday that Somalia was on the brink of famine for the second time in just over a decade, and that time was running out to save lives in the drought-stricken country. 

“Famine is at the door and we are receiving a final warning,” visiting UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told a press conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu. 

“The unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, severe economic issues are pushing many people to… the brink of famine.”

Millions of people are at risk of starvation across the Horn of Africa which is in the grip of the worst drought in four decades after four failed rainy seasons wiped out livestock and crops.

There are “concrete indications” that famine will strike Baidoa and Burhakaba in the Bay region of south-central Somalia between October and December, said Griffiths, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“I’ve been shocked to my core these past few days by the level of pain and suffering we see so many Somalis enduring,” he added. 

“We are in the last moment of the 11th hour to save lives.”

Humanitarian agencies have been ringing alarm bells for months and say the situation across the Horn of Africa — including Kenya and Ethiopia — is likely to deteriorate with a likely fifth failed rainy season in the offing.

In Somalia alone, about 7.8 million people or half the population face crisis hunger levels, including about 213,000 in danger of famine, UN agencies say. 

Around one million have fled their homes on a desperate quest for food and water.

– ‘World must act now’ –

Griffiths said the situation was worse than during Somalia’s last famine in 2011 when 260,000 people died, more than half of them children under the age of six. 

He described scenes of heart-rending suffering during a visit to Baidoa, describing it as the epicentre of the crisis where he saw “children so malnourished they could barely speak” or cry.

Around 1.5 million children across the largely pastoral country were at risk of acute malnutrition by October if nothing changed, he warned. 

The conflict-wracked nation is considered one of the most vulnerable to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis.

A deadly 15-year insurgency by the radical Islamist Al-Shabaab group against the fragile central government is limiting humanitarian access to many areas.

A long-running political crisis also diverted attention away from the drought, but new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud used his inauguration speech in June to appeal for international help to stave off disaster.

In recent years, increasingly extreme droughts and floods have added to the devastation caused by a locust invasion and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) last month said the number of people facing hunger across the Horn had increased to 22 million.

“Our worst fears for Somalia are now a reality: Famine is imminent if funds do not arrive immediately,” WFP executive director David Beasley said on Twitter Monday.

“The world MUST act now – this is a global call to action.”

– ‘Sleepwalking’ to catastrophe – 

A joint report by UN and other humanitarian agencies published Monday said famine conditions in Somalia, facing its fifth straight failed rainy season in the final months of this year, “are likely to last until at least March 2023”.

The UN said at the end of August it had received 67 percent of its $1.5 billion aid target for Somalia.

Funds were initially slow in coming, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine among other crises drawing attention from the disaster in the Horn.

The war has also sent global food and fuel prices soaring, making aid delivery more expensive.

In June, British charity Save the Children had issued an alert that the international community was “sleepwalking towards another catastrophic famine” in Somalia.

Last month, OCHA said about 2.3 million children were at risk of “violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, and death from severe acute malnutrition” across the country.

In 2017, more than six million people in Somalia, more than half of them children, needed aid because of a prolonged drought across East Africa.

But early humanitarian action averted famine that year.

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld William Ruto’s victory in the August 9 presidential election, capping weeks of uncertainty as weary citizens voiced relief over a peaceful conclusion to the prolonged political process. 

“This is a unanimous decision. The petitions are hereby dismissed, as a consequence we declare the first respondent (Ruto) as president-elect,” Chief Justice Martha Koome said.

The verdict dealt a blow to challenger Raila Odinga who had alleged fraud and filed a petition against the poll outcome, which saw Deputy President Ruto scrape to victory by a margin of less than two percentage points in a tightly-fought race.

Although voting day passed off peacefully, observers feared that the disputed outcome could fuel violence in a country with a history of post-poll unrest, with over 1,100 people killed in politically motivated clashes in 2007.

Ruto struck a conciliatory note, promising to extend “a hand of brotherhood” to his rivals, including Odinga, a veteran opposition leader now backed by outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta and the ruling party.

“I extend a hand of brotherhood to all my competitors and to all their supporters. We are not enemies, we are Kenyans,” Ruto, 55, said.

“Our election and judicial institutions have won.”

Ruto will be sworn in on September 13, becoming Kenya’s fifth president since independence from Britain in 1963 and taking the reins of a country beset by inflation, high unemployment and a crippling drought.

As Ruto supporters celebrated, Odinga, 77, said he respected the ruling but disagreed with its substance.

“We have always stood for the rule of law and the constitution. In this regard, we respect the opinion of the court although we vehemently disagree with their decision today,” he said in a statement.

Kenyatta, who had a bitter falling-out with his former deputy in recent years, said he would “oversee a smooth transition to the next administration”, but pointedly did not congratulate Ruto.

– ‘We don’t want trouble’ –

The results’ announcement last month had sparked angry protests in Odinga strongholds, but there was no sign of violence Monday.

In his lakeside bastion of Kisumu, messages calling for peace were plastered on walls and pinned to poles as police patrolled the streets.

“We don’t want trouble because we have realised we are the ones who suffer,” said Nelima Atieno, a seller of second-hand clothes. 

Minibus driver Kevin Omolo echoed her views, telling AFP: “We don’t want people to demonstrate.”

“We can’t change the verdict even though it is painful.”

Judges spent the last two weeks sifting through boxes of evidence to establish if any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify the election, as was the case with the August 2017 presidential poll, which Odinga also challenged.

Koome said the technology used by the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) met the standards of “integrity, verifiability, security and transparency”.

Any “irregularities were not of such magnitude as to affect the final results of the presidential election”, she said, dismissing all the claims made by the petitioners.

Odinga’s 72-page petition alleged hackers broke into IEBC servers and uploaded doctored result forms, but the court said there was no evidence to back the claim.

– ‘We just want jobs’ –

In several towns, the verdict sparked celebrations among Ruto supporters, who cheered and banged plastic buckets.

“I am filled with joy,” said Hassan Barre, a Ruto voter in the northeastern town of Garissa.

“We know the lives of Kenyans will be better… all those who are at the bottom will be uplifted. Businesses will flourish and food prices will go down.”

In Nairobi, stony-faced Odinga supporters expressed their disappointment, with a group of women telling AFP: “Not all of us are happy.”

But with the economy in the doldrums, many Kenyans said they were relieved to see an end to the political drama.

“This announcement enables us to move on (with our lives)”, said Caroline, a 30-year-old flower seller in the capital.

“We just want jobs,” she told AFP.

Analysts said that any protests were unlikely to lead to prolonged unrest.

“The unanimity of the legal ruling and the ongoing economic crisis will dampen the appetite for conflict,” said Ben Hunter, Africa analyst at risk intelligence group Verisk Maplecroft. 

Murithi Mutiga, the International Crisis Group’s programme director for Africa, said on Twitter that “the biggest winner of the Kenyan election is the Kenyan people.”

“From a time when elections were a life and death affair, now they are routine.”

Despite losing the presidential vote, Odinga’s Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya coalition boasts a narrow majority in the lower house of parliament.

Since 2002, no presidential poll outcome in Kenya has gone uncontested, with Odinga previously claiming to have been cheated of victory in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 polls.

African leaders criticised on Monday the lack of Western counterparts at a meeting in Rotterdam where they pleaded for funds to help their countries adapt to global warming.

Senegalese President and African Union chief Macky Sall, and Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said wealthy countries responsible for most CO2 emissions should have been there.

They were speaking at the Africa Adaptation Summit in the Dutch port city, which comes two months before the crucial COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November.

“I cannot fail to note with a touch of bitterness the absence of the leaders of the industrialised world,” Sall said at the opening of the event.

“Because these are the main polluters of our planet and it is they who should finance adaptation.”

The Senegalese leader added that it was “not just the fate of Africa that is at stake but the fate of humanity and the future of the planet.”

Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo also had harsh words for Western leaders, with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte being the only one who showed up to the summit in person.

“I deplore the absence of the leaders of the industrialised nations and the private sector who are, as we know, the greatest polluters,” Tshisekedi said.

“The African continent has the smallest impact on climate change, but paradoxically suffers the majority of its consequences,” he said.

– ‘Moral duty’ –

The continent of Africa emits just some three percent of global CO2 emissions, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon added.

“We have a moral duty” to help African countries adapt, he said.

The summit, the first to focus on helping Africa adapt to the fallout from climate change, brings together the African Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Netherlands-based Global Center on Adaptation.

They are hoping to raise pledges of some $250 million in capital to attract investors in adaptation programmes.

“We have to find $250 million, it’s not that much to ask,” said Senegal’s Sall.

Dutch premier Rutte admitted in his closing remarks that the turnout of non-African leaders had been disappointing.

“I know that many wanted to come, but simply I think the attendance has not been at a level we would have liked,” said Rutte.

The international community had to “think this through how in future… we have as many leaders present as possible” at future COP conferences and other climate meetings, he said.

African nations agreed at a summit in Gabon last week on a common push to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a goal that scientists fear is increasingly elusive — at upcoming UN climate talks.

That and the Rotterdam meeting are part of a series of regional meetings ahead of the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh from November 6 to 18.

Jubilant supporters of Kenya’s president-elect William Ruto took to the streets Monday after his election victory was upheld by the Supreme Court, with many ordinary people voicing hope the country could now move on. 

In Ruto’s Rift Valley home village of Sugoi, large crowds of people were dancing in celebration, waving posters declaring “The 5th President” and thanking God for his victory in the close-fought August 9 election.

The 55-year-old Ruto will become Kenya’s fifth president since independence from colonial ruler Britain when he is sworn in on September 13.

In other towns, people turned out wearing the bright yellow of Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party, chanting, banging plastic buckets and blowing vuvuzelas.

“I am filled with joy,” said Hassan Barre, a Ruto voter in the northeastern town of Garissa.

“We know the lives of Kenyans will be better… all those who are at the bottom will be uplifted. Businesses will flourish and food prices will go down.”

Ruto had cast himself as a champion for the downtrodden during his election campaign, promising to create jobs and tackle a cost-of-living crisis that has left many Kenyans struggling to put food on the table.

“I am so happy, so happy,” said Boniface Siene, 45, who works as a security agent and boda boda (motorcycle taxi) driver in the capital Nairobi.

“Now the country can move on. We want change and he will bring change. He will do a lot of good to our country.”

The atmosphere was more sombre in the stronghold of Ruto’s defeated election rival Raila Odinga, who was licking his wounds after his fifth failed bid for the presidency.

Messages calling for peace were plastered on walls and pinned to poles as police patrolled the streets of Kisumu, where violent protests had broken out briefly following the announcement of the results last month.

– ‘We can’t change the verdict’ –

Kenya had been on edge awaiting the Supreme Court ruling, with the country still haunted by deadly violence that erupted over previous poll disputes and now grappling with an economic slowdown and crippling drought.

“We don’t want trouble because we have realised we are the ones who suffer,” said Nelima Atieno, a seller of second-hand clothes in Kisumu. 

Minibus driver Kevin Omolo mirrored her views, telling AFP: “We don’t want people to demonstrate.”

“We can’t change the verdict even though it is painful.”

In Nairobi, Kenyans voiced hope that life could get back to normal after weeks of uncertainty.

Kenya is the most dynamic economy in East Africa but many are suffering deep hardship, with prices for basic goods skyrocketing and unemployment a major problem particularly among the youth.

“This decision is good for the country. I expected riots, but this announcement enables us to move on,” said 30-year-old flower seller Caroline, adding: “We just want jobs.”

Nicholas, a 30-year-old gardener, told AFP: “What we want is peace, and today, after the decision, it is really calm around. This decision will bring togetherness.”

His view was echoed by Albert Ouma, a Ruto supporter in the coastal city of Mombasa.

“The Supreme Court has given a very good verdict, they have looked at the interest of the nation,” he said. 

“Kenyans should remain together and work towards building this nation.”

Burkina Faso junta chief Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, visiting Ivory Coast on a key foreign trip, on Monday stood by a pledge to restore civilian rule within two years. 

“Be assured that the commitments made by Burkina Faso to the international community will be honoured,” Damiba told the press during a brief visit to the country’s neighbour.

Under the promised 24-month transition, the junta “will organise elections for the return to normal constitutional order,” he said.

Damiba’s trip to Ivory Coast comes on the heels of a visit to Mali on Saturday — his first official foray abroad since January’s military takeover.

The three countries are worried by jihadists whose bloody campaign in the Sahel has swept across three countries and now threatens to strike south to the Gulf of Guinea.

Starting in northern Mali in 2012, the insurgents attacked neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger in 2015, launching an offensive that has killed thousands and forced some two million people from their homes.

In recent years, the insurgents have mounted sporadic raids on northern Ivory Coast, which shares a nearly 600-kilometre (370-mile) border with Burkina.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara vowed his country’s “total support” for the junta’s “efforts” against the jihadists.

“Terrorist attacks are a concern for the entire sub-region,” he said.

“We should do everything to support each other, to continue to exchange information and have cooperation among security forces.”

On Sunday, Damiba in a nationwide address, said Burkina’s armed forces had “intensified offensive actions” against the jihadists and acquired new equipment.

A “relative calm” had returned to parts of the east, north and centre-north, which have borne the brunt of the attacks, he said.

Asked in Abidjan whether he was playing a role in efforts to resolve a spat between Mali and Ivory Coast, Damiba said he hoped “a solution can be found” between the two countries themselves.

Forty-nine Ivorian troops were arrested on July 10 after they arrived at the airport at Bamako, the Malian capital.

They were then placed in custody and charged with attempting to harm state security. Ivory Coast is demanding their release, saying they were simply sent to Mali to provide backup duties for the UN peacekeeping mission.

Three women who were among the 49 were released, officials from Mali, Ivory Coast and Togo, which has been acting as mediator, said on Saturday.

Ivory Coast is a key member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is struggling with a string of military coups in the region in the past two years.

The Malian junta has accused Ivory Coast of encouraging the bloc to impose harsh sanctions against it, which were lifted in July.

The United Nations warned Monday that Somalia was on the brink of famine for the second time in just over a decade, and that time was running out to save lives in the drought-ravaged country. 

“Famine is at the door and we are receiving a final warning,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told a press conference in the Somali capital Mogadishu. 

“The unprecedented failure of four consecutive rainy seasons, decades of conflict, mass displacement, severe economic issues are pushing many people to… the brink of famine.”

Millions of people are at risk of starvation in Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya which are in the grip of the worst drought in four decades after four failed rainy seasons wiped out livestock and crops.

A food and nutrition report has “concrete indications” that famine will strike Baidoa and Burhakaba in the Bay region of south-central Somalia between October and December, said the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who began a visit to the country on Thursday.

“I’ve been shocked to my core these past few days by the level of pain and suffering we see so many Somalis enduring,” he added. 

“We are in the last moment of the 11th hour to save lives.”

Humanitarian agencies have been ringing alarm bells for months and say the situation in the Horn of Africa is likely to deteriorate with a likely fifth failed rainy season in the offing.

– ‘Worst fears now a reality’ –

Griffiths said the situation was worse than during Somalia’s last famine in 2011 when 260,000 people died, more than half of them children under the age of six. 

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) last month said the number of people at risk of starvation across the Horn had increased to 22 million.

“Our worst fears for Somalia are now a reality: Famine is imminent if funds do not arrive immediately,” WFP executive director David Beasley said on Twitter.

“The world MUST act now – this is a global call to action.”

In Somalia alone, the number of people facing crisis hunger levels is 7.8 million, or about half the population, while around a million have fled their homes on a desperate quest for food and water, UN agencies say. 

Griffiths described scenes of heart-rending suffering during a visit to Baidoa, describing it as the epicentre of the crisis where he saw “children so malnourished they could barely speak” or cry.

He said 1.5 million children across the country were at risk of acute malnutrition by October if nothing changed. 

Conflict-wracked Somalia is considered one of the most vulnerable to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis.

A deadly insurgency by the radical Islamist Al-Shabaab group for more than a decade and a half against the fragile federal government is limiting humanitarian access to many areas.

A long-running political crisis also diverted attention away from the drought, but new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud used his inauguration speech in June to appeal for international help to stave off disaster.

In recent years, increasingly extreme droughts and floods have added to the devastation caused by a locust invasion and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said the Horn was likely facing a fifth straight failed rainy season over the months of October to December.

– ‘Sleepwalking’ to catastrophe – 

  

At the start of this year, the WFP had put the number of people facing hunger across the Horn at 13 million, and appealed for donors to open their wallets.

Funds were initially slow in coming, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine among other crises drawing attention from the disaster in the Horn, humanitarian workers said.

The war in Ukraine has also sent global food and fuel prices soaring, making aid delivery more expensive.

In June, British charity Save the Children had issued an alert that the international community was “sleepwalking towards another catastrophic famine” in Somalia.

OCHA has said the March-May 2022 rainy season was the driest on record in the last 70 years, and 2020-2022 had surpassed “the horrific droughts in both 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 in duration and severity”.

“An estimated 2.3 million girls and boys are at imminent risk of violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect, and death from severe acute malnutrition as result of food and nutrition crisis across Somalia,” it said in August.

In 2017, more than six million people in Somalia, more than half of them children, needed aid because of a prolonged drought across East Africa.

But early humanitarian action averted famine that year.