Africa Business

Following the signing of a peace deal between Ethiopia’s government and rebels in the Tigray region, what lies ahead is “more consequential,” a rebel spokesman said Sunday, with humanitarian aid desperately needed.

The deal signed in Pretoria, South Africa on November 2 called for the disarmament of rebels and unhindered access for humanitarian supplies.

The restoration of aid to Tigray and its six million people was one of the key planks of the accord.

Ethiopia’s northernmost region is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.

In Nairobi on Saturday, the two sides agreed to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.

That agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital on the full implementation of the peace deal to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia.

“We have concluded our long drawn out deliberations/negotiations on a peaceful path to resolving the war on/in Tigray,” tweeted Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebels.

“What lies ahead and how we handle it is far more consequential than the distance travelled thus far,” Reda added.

– ‘Withdrawal of foreign forces’ –

The conflict between the TPLF and forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, which include regional militias and the Eritrean army, has caused an untold number of deaths, forced more than two million people from their homes and driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine in Tigray.

Estimates of casualties vary widely, with the United States saying that as many as half a million people have died, while the EU’s foreign envoy Josep Borrell said that more than 100,000 people may have been killed.

The two warring parties agreed on Saturday that “the disarmament of heavy weapons will be done simultaneously with the withdrawal of foreign forces”, a reference to Eritrea which borders Tigray.

“We welcome yesterday’s agreement to allow immediate unfettered humanitarian access in #Tigray and neighbouring regions,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted on Sunday.

“People are in need of massive amounts of health assistance, including food, medicines, the free movement of humanitarian staff and reopening of basic services,” he added.

“We already have teams in Tigray (and in the neighbouring regions of) Afar, and Amhara, and we are preparing to bring in much more needed aid,” a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva told AFP on Sunday.

The delivery of humanitarian aid by road and air has been almost completely disrupted since the resumption of fighting in August, after a five-month truce.

The conflict began in November 2020 when Abiy sent troops into Tigray, accusing the TPLF of attacking federal army camps.

The TPLF was the dominant force in the four-party Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition which controlled Ethiopian politics from 1991 for the best part of three decades.

Some 30 quad bikes, motorcycles and four-wheel drives are rallying in Libya’s desert — a welcome but rare taste of normality for a nation lashed by the shifting sands of conflict.

At the launch in 2013, organisers of the Al-Hamada rally had envisioned an annual event, yet this year’s episode is only the third to get beyond the starting line. 

Competitors from Libya and Tunisia have taken to the drivers’ seats, one of them a woman for the first time in a Libyan rally. 

The contest sends a message that the country can pull off “a great sporting event, far from the politics and divisions” that perennially buffet it, organiser Khaled Drera said.

Libya “wants to progress towards the stability that it deserves”, said Drera, who is also a tour guide and an expert on the country’s desert landscapes.

The rally’s name stems from the vast territory at the heart of Libya’s portion of the Sahara, a stretch of tranquillity in a nation repeatedly engulfed by chaos since the fall of Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.  

For months now, two rival governments have been vying for power — one based in the capital Tripoli in the country’s west, and the other appointed by the parliament, based in the east. 

Clashes between the two camps have repeatedly shaken Libya this year, and notably the capital. A confrontation in late August left at least 30 people dead.

– ‘Didn’t chicken out’ –

After departing Thursday from Zintan, a mountainous small town around 170 kilometres (105 miles) southwest of Tripoli, the competitors have been driving a course that covers more than 400 kilometres of largely flat and stony ground.

The event finishes on Sunday in Ghadames, a UNESCO world heritage site, dubbed the “desert pearl”, near the border with Algeria and Tunisia.

Touting photos of the bikes and four-wheel drives against a backdrop of palm trees and brilliant golden sand, the organisers hope to attract attention from beyond Libya’s frontiers. 

Already, thanks to the presence of the Tunisian team, this year’s rally is an international event, with organisers hoping to extend the competitor base in future.

Tunisian Chaima Ben Ammou — the first woman to compete — said her passion for motorbikes came from her father, who still accompanies her to both national and international fixtures. 

“I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to get here, but I have the support of my family,” said the 29-year-old, who has won a motocross championship in Tunisia and has put her law studies on hold to pursue her passion. 

She said she did not hesitate in “responding to the invitation of our Libyan brothers”, ditching her motorbike in favour of a Japanese four-wheel drive, even though she has no experience competing in that category.

Wearing a black helmet and with her hair pulled back, she said she knew she was blazing a trail for other women.  

“Despite the difficulties, I didn’t chicken out,” she said, from the wheel of her car.

Seeking to speed up global efforts against climate change, Vanuatu is leading efforts to get the International Court of Justice involved, a move praised by activists at UN talks.

The COP27 climate summit in Egypt has been dominated by calls for nations to redouble their efforts to cut emissions and for rich polluters to finally provide the money that developing nations need to cope with global warming.

Threatened by rising sea levels, the small Pacific island of Vanuatu signalled last year that it would seek a non-binding “advisory opinion” from the Hague-based ICJ.

A year later, the initiative was formally launched at the UN General Assembly, which will have to vote on whether to back it in the next few months.

“I say let the gavel fall. Let judges inspire our leaders to act and let justice be done,” Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said at the COP27 meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Speaking to some 100 world leaders attending a summit on Tuesday, Vanuatu President Nikenike Vurobaravu said the initiative had grown into a coalition of 85 countries.

“Clearly, something is not working,” Vurobaravu said, noting that emissions are rising, climate financing remains “wholly inadequate” and the ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius may not be met.

“I appeal in the strongest terms to leaders here at COP27 to vote in favour of the ICJ resolution at the UN General Assembly so that we can finally put human rights at the centre of climate decisions,” Vurobaravu said.

– ‘So much excitement’ –

Vanuatu’s UN ambassador, Odo Tevi, said the goal is to “clarify the rights and obligations of states under international law as it pertains to the adverse effects of climate change”.

Vanuatu also wants the ICJ to “clarify the due diligence requirements relating to climate action for emitters of greenhouse gases — past, present and future,” he said.

The question could irk developed countries that have historically been the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases but reject the idea of paying reparations to developing nations for the losses caused by natural disasters.

The issue of “loss and damage” is at the forefront of the COP27 talks that are scheduled to end on Friday.

Yeb Sano, executive director at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said Vanuatu’s effort has “generated so much excitement” and global support.

“The international community needs clarity of purpose and this campaign is a beacon of hope that has the power to breathe new life… into the multilateral negotiations,” Sano said.

– ‘A matter of survival’ –

A similar effort more than a decade ago by another Pacific island, Palau, fizzled. But times have changed, with a slew of climate-related disasters this year highlighting the urgency the planet faces.

Though a legal opinion by ICJ would not be binding, Vanuatu hopes it would shape international law for generations to come.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, an assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said the ICJ can provide “legally relevant guidance” that is “very likely to be followed” by courts around the world.

While the Paris Agreement targets for emissions reduction are not binding, she said an ICJ opinion could signal that there are “legal obligations for taking action on climate change and legal consequences when these obligations are breached”. 

Perhaps more importantly, she added, an ICJ opinion could “inspire more ambitious climate action” from governments and big companies.

Harjeet Singh, a senior adviser at the Climate Action Network, said ICJ hearings on the matter would generate “much awareness” around climate change.

“It’s a matter of survival,” he told AFP.

The debate over abortion rights has flared in Morocco after a teenager’s death following an unsafe termination, but social taboos continue to stall reforms.

“If I spoke out for abortion rights in front of my brothers, I’d be risking my life,” said student Leila, 21, adding that she comes from a relatively “modern” family.

In September, a 14-year-old identified as Meriem died following an unsafe procedure in a rural village in the country’s centre.

The conservative North African kingdom, which criminalises abortion, has since seen growing calls for reform to women’s reproductive rights, although pervasive social attitudes and a lack of political will continue to block change.

“If I said the word ‘abortion’ in my family, I’d be accused and rejected, even by my parents,” said 22-year-old Amal, a student at the University of Rabat.

– ‘Law that kills’ –

Unless a pregnancy endangers a woman’s health, Moroccan women undergoing abortions face up to two years in jail, while those assisting them risk five years’ imprisonment.

Local organisations say that despite the heavy penalties, between 600 and 800 women have an abortion every day in the country of 38 million people — many in dangerous, unsanitary conditions.

Meriem’s was carried out “at the home of a young man who was sexually exploiting the victim”, Moroccan feminist coalition Spring of Dignity said. 

Her death came seven years after a royal commission recommended decriminalising the procedure in “certain cases” such as rape, incest, foetal malformation or if the mother is mentally disabled.

But the report changed “nothing”, according to gynaecologist Chafik Chraibi, a campaigner for legalisation.

“There’s nothing but silence, the subject isn’t a priority,” he told AFP.

Chraibi, the founder of the Moroccan Association Against Clandestine Abortion, says a lack of political will is blocking any change to an “archaic” law that dates back to 1963.

A draft bill to modify the legislation has been presented twice to parliament before being withdrawn without any official explanation.

Dozens of rights activists gathered outside parliament in late September to demand changes to the “law that kills”.

Families Minister Aawatif Hayar told parliament last month that the government was taking “serious interest” in changing the penal code.

But any changes must “respect Islamic law and be acceptable to Moroccan society”, she said.

Campaigner Chraibi said religious authorities and Moroccan conservatism were blocking moves towards decriminalisation — but added that nothing in Islamic law explicitly bans the practice.

– ‘Judicial and social violence’ –

Morocco is far from being an outlier in the Arab world. 

The only North African state to allow women to choose an abortion is Tunisia, whose first post-independence president Habib Bourguiba legalised the practice in 1973, two years earlier than former colonial power France.

But there is little national debate on the subject, and most women who undergo the procedure keep it a secret.

A 2018 Algerian law provides for the “therapeutic termination of pregnancy”, but rights groups note this requires a medical committee’s approval and is limited to cases of mortal danger to the mother or if the baby is likely to be severely disabled.

Algeria otherwise can impose a two-year jail term for women who have an abortion, while doctors who facilitate terminations face five years.

Libya also criminalises abortions except when there is mortal danger to the mother, and imposes long jail terms on those carrying them out.

Sentences are often reduced in cases where the procedure is undertaken to preserve the family’s “honour”. Libyan women with the means often seek abortions overseas.

Moroccan activist Faouzia Yassine says the kingdom’s laws are a form of “judicial and social violence against women”.

She called for a “root-and-branch reform of the penal code” and to bring it in line with “international conventions that Morocco has ratified”.

“Criminalisation of abortions means restricting a woman’s freedom to control her body and shows a desire to compel her to keep a foetus against her will,” she said.

Solar panels glint in the sun on a Tunisian lagoon, part of a long-delayed drive to harness the North African country’s vast renewable energy potential.

While industry insiders complain of red tape, fossil fuel prices that soared after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine created a powerful incentive for such investments across the Maghreb region.

“Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, each have an abundance of solar energy resources as well as ample wind energy resources,” said Michael Tanchum, an expert on the sector. 

“Extreme price pressures on natural gas, especially in Europe, have changed the calculus for investments in renewable energy.”

Omar Bey, of French-based renewables developer Qair, hopes the firm’s 200-kilowatt floating solar station on a lake next to a Tunis industrial park can be a prototype for bigger projects nationwide.

“Tunisia doesn’t have any choice but to go for renewables, given the situation around hydrocarbons and particularly gas,” he said, adding that innovations like floating solar stations could help. 

Being on reservoirs or lakes helps cool the panels, making them more efficient, and “means we can use water instead of taking up land that can be used for other things like farming or homes,” Bey said.

It also helps reduce evaporation, another benefit in the water-stressed region, he said.

Tunisia, on the sun-drenched Mediterranean Sea, is well-placed to produce clean energy both for domestic use and for export to energy-hungry Europe.

In 2015 the country set ambitious targets for renewables.

But last year green sources accounted for only 2.8 percent of the country’s energy mix and the rest came from natural gas, according to the state Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas (STEG).

Tanchum, a non-resident scholar at Washington’s Middle East Institute, said “political paralysis” was holding the sector back.

Tunisia has suffered more than a decade of turmoil since its 2011 revolution. Ideological wrangling has often taken precedence over transforming the economy, which depends heavily on food and energy imports.

The state’s fuel subsidies bill soared 370 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period of 2021, official figures show.

Yet, despite incentives to push for renewables, such efforts have been held back by legal and administrative obstacles, according to Ali Kanzari, president of an association representing solar firms.

“Sometimes (imported solar panels) sit for a month or more in customs,” he said.

“We need more flexible laws. Everything needs to be sped up.”

– Morocco leads –

One major solar station in the desert near Tataouine was finally connected to the grid in October, two years after its completion. Project head Abdelmomen Ferchichi blamed difficulties in getting permits, and the station’s distance from the grid.

Bey said “misunderstandings” among some union members within STEG, wary of attempts to privatise the sector by stealth, had also delayed development.

“Today, all that’s behind us,” he said.

Tanchum told AFP that despite the renewables potential of the entire Maghreb, “only Morocco has emerged as a regional leader”.

Morocco decided in 2009 to boost renewables to 52 percent of its energy mix by 2030 and it currently produces around a fifth of its electricity from clean sources, according to the government.

Its energy ministry says “this vision has started bearing fruit, with 111 renewable energy projects completed or under development”.

They include a solar and wind facility to generate more than 10 gigawatts of power and send it to the United Kingdom via a 3,800-kilometre (2,360-mile) undersea cable.

Tunisia dreams of doing something similar.

In October, it applied for a European Union grant for an 800-million euro ($828 million) cable to Italy covering 200 kilometres, to go online by 2027.

For Kanzari, the association president, the link can’t come soon enough.

“They’re going to have a cold winter” in Europe, he said. “If we’d had a cable that was ready, and four or five gigawatt solar power stations in the desert, we’d be selling electricity and earning hard cash.”

Tanchum said that although Maghreb countries could benefit from this type of project, much of the energy should be for domestic use, so they “don’t become the green battery of Europe”.

– Algeria’s ambitious target –

Neighbouring Algeria, Africa’s top natural gas producer, has set the ambitious target of 15,000 megawatts from solar by 2035.

The first part of a 1,000-megawatt project is set to come online by late next year, but for now the country generates just three percent of its electricity from the sun.

Intissar Fakir, head of the North Africa and Sahel Programme at the Middle East Institute, said Algeria’s cash glut from gas exports is going to upgrade the fossil fuel infrastructure, not to renewables.

There are also “big hurdles for foreign investment in the sector — not least Algeria’s notorious bureaucracy,” she added.

Kenyan soldiers landed in Goma in eastern DR Congo on Saturday as part of a regional military operation, while Congolese forces clashed with M23 rebels north of the city.

The M23 militia has recently surged across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, capturing swathes of territory and inflaming tensions with neighbouring Rwanda. 

Leaders of the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) bloc, in which Kenya is the regional heavyweight, agreed in April to establish a joint force to help restore security in the mineral-rich DRC.

This week, Kenya’s parliament approved the deployment of just over 900 troops to the DRC as part of the joint EAC military force.

Two planes carrying about 100 Kenyan troops touched down in Goma airport on Saturday morning, according to AFP reporters present. 

Kenyan Lieutenant-Colonel Dennis Obiero told reporters that their mission is “to conduct offensive operations” alongside Congolese forces, and to assist in disarming militias. 

“Insecurity is something which breaks up the social fabric,” he added, explaining that the Kenyan contingent would also work with humanitarian agencies in a bid to bring stability to the eastern DRC. 

Fighting by Saturday afternoon was edging closer to Goma, however, with Congolese troops clashing with M23 rebels just 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the commercial hub of about one million people.

The group’s resurgence has cratered relations between the DRC and its smaller neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of backing the M23.

Despite official denials from Kigali, an unpublished report for the United Nations seen by AFP in August pointed to Rwandan involvement with the rebel group.

– Resurgent rebels –

Over 120 armed groups are active across eastern Congo, many a legacy of regional wars which flared at the turn of the century. 

The mostly Congolese Tutsi M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012, briefly capturing Goma before being driven out.

But after lying dormant for years, the rebels took up arms again in late 2021 claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate them into the army, among other grievances. 

In June, the M23 captured the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border. 

In recent weeks the rebels have also won a string of victories against the Congolese army in North Kivu, dramatically increasing the territory under their control. 

On Saturday, the M23 and Congolese troops were clashing in the villages of Kikumba and Gikeri north of Goma, according to locals and security officials.

“The M23 attacked our positions but we repelled them,” said an army officer via telephone, who asked for anonymity. 

A resident of the local area, whom AFP is choosing not to name for security reasons, said fighting has been ongoing in Gikeri since 3 pm. 

“We no longer know where to go to flee,” he said. 

The United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA estimates that recent fighting in North Kivu has displaced 188,000 people.

– Diplomatic efforts –

Kinshasa expelled Rwanda’s ambassador at the end of last month, as the M23 captured more territory, while also recalling its envoy from Kigali.

There are diplomatic efforts underway to ease regional tensions, parallel to the EAC’s military operation.

Angolan President Joao Lourenco visited Rwanda on Friday and met Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi in the DRC on Saturday.

“We are all concerned about the situation in the east of the DRC today,” Angolan Foreign Minister Tete Antonio told reporters in Kinshasa after the presidents met.

French President Emmanuel Macron also held a phone call on Saturday with Kenyan President William Ruto, hailing the country’s deployment to eastern DRC. 

Macron “reiterated France’s support for the efforts undertaken by the countries of the region to obtain de-escalation,” according to a French presidency statement.

Kenya’s former president Uhuru Kenyatta is also expected in the DRC capital for talks on Sunday. 

The EAC force will be under Kenyan command. Its total size and scope remains unclear, however.

Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels agreed Saturday to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.

The agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital Nairobi this week on the full implementation of a deal signed between the warring sides 10 days ago to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia.

“The parties have agreed to facilitate unhindered humanitarian access to all in need of assistance in Tigray and neighbouring regions,” according to a joint statement read out at a Nairobi press conference.

The agreement was signed by Field Marshal Berhanu Jula, Ethiopian armed forces chief of staff, and General Tadesse Worede, commander-in-chief of the Tigray rebel forces.

African Union special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, who has been mediating the peace negotiations, said Saturday’s deal was with “immediate effect”.

The two sides have also agreed to establish a joint committee to implement an agreement to disarm fighters with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the statement said.

The African Union Commission said it “applauds the parties on these significant confidence-building measures and encourages them to continue towards the full implementation of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, as part of overall efforts to end the conflict and restore peace, security and stability in Ethiopia”.

After little more than a week of negotiations in the South African capital Pretoria, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF on November 2 signed a peace deal which has been hailed by the international community as a crucial first step in ending the bloodshed.

– ‘Untold misery’ –

The restoration of aid to Tigray and its six million people was one of the key planks of the accord.

Ethiopia’s northernmost region is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis due to lack of food and medicine, and there is limited access to basic services including electricity, banking and communications.

“We have suffered untold misery over the last two years and still continue to suffer,” Tadesse said. “So the commitment we are making today is with the hope that our people’s suffering will come to an end soon”.

Berhanu pledged the government’s “full commitment for bringing peace and stability to our people and our country”.   

International pressure for a ceasefire had been mounting since intense fighting erupted in late August, shattering a five-month truce that had allowed limited aid to reach Tigray.

The Pretoria deal notably calls for the cessation of hostilities, restoration of humanitarian aid, the re-establishment of federal authority over Tigray and the disarming of TPLF fighters.

The conflict between the TPLF and pro-Abiy forces, which include regional militias and the Eritrean army, has caused an untold number of deaths, forced more than two million people from their homes and driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine in Tigray.

Estimates of casualties vary widely, with the United States saying that as many as half a million people have died, while the EU’s foreign envoy Josep Borrell said that more than 100,000 people may have been killed.

UN-backed investigators have accused all sides of committing abuses but also charged that Addis Ababa had been using starvation as a weapon of war — claims denied by the Ethiopian authorities.

Abiy declared last week that his government — whose forces had claimed considerable gains on the Tigray battlefield in recent weeks, had secured “100 percent” of what it had sought in the peace negotiations.

On Friday, the government said its forces controlled 70 percent of Tigray and that aid was being sent in, including 35 trucks of food and three trucks of medicine to the strategic city of Shire.

But the rebels and a humanitarian worker based in Tigray swiftly denied the claims.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization called for a massive influx of food and medicines into Tigray following the ceasefire deal, saying aid had not yet been allowed in.

“Many people are dying from treatable diseases. Many people are dying from starvation,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who hails from Tigray, told a press conference.

Abiy — a Nobel Peace Prize laureate — sent troops into Tigray on November 4, 2020 to topple the TPLF, the region’s ruling party, in response to what he said were attacks by the group on federal army camps.

The conflict capped months of simmering tensions between Abiy and the TPLF which had dominated the national government for almost three decades until he took office in 2018.

Chants of “free them all” and “no climate justice without human rights” rang out between the halls of COP27 Saturday, in the largest protest since the UN climate summit began.

Jailed Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, who is at the summit campaigning for her brother’s release, marched in the front line with hundreds behind her.

Seven months into a hunger strike, Abdel Fattah began refusing water last Sunday, as world leaders arrived in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27. 

With them came Seif, who at two press conferences this week was heckled by apparently pro-government attendees, who called her brother a “criminal”, not a “political prisoner”.

Behind her on Saturday — winding between halls inside which world leaders negotiated over the climate crisis — hundreds of protesters demanded urgent action towards climate justice and human rights, an AFP correspondent reported.

Although demonstrations at COP27 must be approved by organising authorities and should take place only in a special zone, activists behind Saturday’s rally said they got UN permission for their action outside the designated area.

They marched behind a banner reading: “You have not yet been defeated” –- the title of Abdel Fattah’s book, which has become a rallying cry for summit activists.

The demonstrators incorporated the words into their demands for indigenous, women’s, labour and disability rights. Multiple speakers have ended their speeches in the conference’s formal proceedings with the same sentence.

“I came here thinking I would be alone. I am sure that those in power thought that my voice would be drowned out and ignored. Instead, I found that my family was already here waiting for me,” protest organiser Asad Rehman read from a statement from Seif.

She stood silently next to him.

Abdel Fattah was a key figure in Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising more than a decade ago. He began consuming “only 100 calories a day” in April, his family said, to protest the conditions he and about 60,000 other political prisoners face in the country.

His family say they fear for his life, and have made months-long appeals to the international community, particularly Britain, where Abdel Fattah gained citizenship this year from behind bars through his British-born mother.

Some world leaders have raised his case with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in bilateral meetings during the climate talks.

His lawyer, former presidential candidate Khaled Ali, on Saturday submitted another request for a permit to visit Abdel Fattah in the prison in northern Egypt where he is being held.

Ali had said on Thursday that he was denied entry to the Wadi al-Natroun prison despite having a permit from the prosecution.

The family requested a pardon from President Sisi Friday, Abdel Fattah’s other sister announced.

The plea has been picked up by one of Egypt’s most watched talk show hosts, the ardently pro-Sisi Amr Adib. On prime time television Friday, Adib said the pardon would be in “the interest of Egypt first and foremost”.

Brazil will protect the Amazon “with its own efforts” without waiting for international funding, the former environment minister of incoming President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Saturday at UN climate talks. 

Credited with curbing deforestation in the 2000s, Marina Silva outlined key environmental priorities for the new president, who will visit the climate talks next week in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Silva is tipped to reprise her role in Lula’s new government. 

Lula has vowed that the fight against deforestation in the Amazon would be “a strategic priority” of his government, countering the legacy of Jair Bolsonaro, who presided over a surge of rainforest destruction.

Silva said Lula’s visit to Egypt even before he takes office on January 1 shows that “Brazil is regaining environmental leadership in the multilateral arena”.

With a plan to combat the destruction of the Amazon and pursue a reforestation target of 12 million hectares (30 million acres), Brazil will lead “by example”, she said. 

Silva added that the country would act to preserve forests — a crucial buffer against global warming — without depending on international aid.

But she welcomed announcements from Norway and Germany that they would resume financial support. Both countries withdrew aid in 2019 shortly after Bolsonaro came to power. 

Norway is the largest contributor to that fund, which currently holds $641 million, according to its environment ministry.

Since Bolsonaro — a staunch ally of agribusiness — took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade.

Silva said there was a need to create a national super-body to coordinate climate action among various ministries.

“It would be something innovative and powerful,” she said.

Lula, 77, secured a narrow win over far-right incumbent Bolsonaro in an October 30 runoff election.

The veteran leftist will be inaugurated for a third term on January 1, facing a far tougher outlook than the commodities-fuelled boom he presided over in the 2000s.

Silva travelled to Egypt to prepare the ground for Lula’s expected visit.

She called for a review of the market in carbon credits amid concerns that oil and gas majors use them as a way to avoid reducing their own emissions. 

“I do not believe that fossil energy generation should be perpetuated by relying on these credits,” she said. 

While she said Brazil would still need its oil resources “as a transition to other sources of energy generation”, she added that her personal opinion was that even state-owned oil company Petrobras should go beyond oil and contribute to Brazil’s energy transition.

Belgian Thomas Detry and Dane Rasmus Hojgaard share the lead on 207 after the third round of the Nedbank Golf Challenge at the South African resort of Sun City on Saturday.

Detry, seeking a first European Tour win after losing in the Scottish Open play-off last year, carded a 67 at the Gary Player Country Club 175 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

“I have been playing the best golf of my career,” said the 29-year-old after a round that included seven birdies and two bogeys.

Hojgaard, hoping to continue winning a tournament each year since turning professional in 2019, fired a third straight 69, with an eagle, three birdies and two bogeys on his card.  

“My driving has been good and I can win tomorrow provided I stay calm, focused, and avoid playing complicated shots,” he said.

The stage is set for a thrilling final round on Sunday with six shots separating the leading 20 contenders for the $1 million (965,000 euros) first prize.

Detry and Hojgaard are a shot ahead of two South Africans, former Nedbank winner Branden Grace, who carded a 71, and debutant Thurston Lawrence, whose 65 was the lowest third round score.

A further stroke back are South African Christiaan Bezuidenhout (68) and joint second round leader Luke Donald (73), the 2023 European Ryder Cup captain from England.

Defending champion Tommy Fleetwood from England, who posted a third straight 70 for a 210 total, promised to get “stuck in” on Sunday and believed he had a “good chance of winning”.