Africa Business

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday defended his country’s relationship with Russia, as Moscow’s top diplomat toured Africa to drum up support over the war in Ukraine.

“How can we be against somebody who has never harmed us,” the veteran Ugandan leader said alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a press conference in the town of Entebbe. 

“If Russia makes mistakes, we tell them. When they have not made mistakes, we can’t be against them,” he added, hailing Russia for backing anti-colonial movements in Africa.

Uganda was one of 17 African nations to abstain during a vote in March on a UN resolution that overwhelmingly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Vulnerable countries on the continent and elsewhere in the world, however, have been hard hit by the fallout from the war that has sent prices of fuel and food soaring.

Lavrov insisted Russia was not to blame.

“There is a very loud campaign around this, but our African friends understand their root cause,” Lavrov said. 

“They are not related to what is happening within the special military operation,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term for the conflict.

Lavrov’s trip comes hot on the heels of a landmark deal Russia and Ukraine signed on Friday with the United Nations and Turkey, which is aimed at relieving the global food crisis caused by blocked Black Sea grain deliveries.

Less than 24 hours later Moscow struck the Ukrainian port in Odessa — one of three exit hubs designated in the agreement — sparking fury in Kyiv and heightening fears the Kremlin would not go through with the deal.

As relations with the West have collapsed over the conflict, Lavrov said Africa would play a greater role in Russia’s foreign policy.

Museveni also said Kampala would cooperate with Moscow in a range of fields including space, energy, agriculture and vaccines.

“Our interest with Russia is when there is progress with Russia, we (Africa) benefit,” he added.

Lavrov arrived in Ethiopia later Tuesday on the latest leg of a trip that took him to Egypt and Congo-Brazzaville before Uganda.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday declared his country would support Africa’s need for security as he embarked on a three-nation tour aimed at renewing France’s relations with the continent.

Touching on a long-standing grievance in France’s former African colonies, Macron also announced French archives on its colonial era in Cameroon would be opened up so that historians could “shed light” on “painful moments”.

In a speech in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde, Macron promised France “will not relinquish the security of the African continent”, where a jihadist campaign in the Sahel is now shaking countries to the south.

“France remains resolutely committed to the security of the continent, acting in support and at the request of our African partners,” Macron told a gathering of French expatriates.

France is reconfiguring its posture in the Sahel after falling out with the military junta in Mali, the epicentre of a bloody 10-year-old jihadist campaign in the region.

After a pullout from Mali that is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, France’s Barkhane anti-jihadist force will have around 2,500 troops in the Sahel, just under half of the deployment at its peak, say French officers.

The force will also make a tactical shift, acting more in a support role for local forces than in taking the lead, they say.

Macron landed late on Monday on a three-day tour that will also take him to Benin and Guinea-Bissau. 

He met on Tuesday with Cameroon’s 89-year-old president, Paul Biya, an iron-fisted ruler who has been in power since 1982.

In his speech, Macron said the reconfigured mission will extend “beyond the Sahel, to the Gulf of Guinea and second-layer countries which now have to face terrorist groups which are expanding and shaking up the whole region”.

The jihadist insurgency began in northern Mali in 2012 and hit neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.

Across the region, thousands of people have been killed and more than two million have fled their homes.

Sporadic cross-border attacks have also occurred on coastal countries to the south, sparking fears of an expansion by the jihadists to the Gulf of Guinea.

Macron also pledged French support for countries fighting jihadists in the Lake Chad region, where an older insurgency launched by Nigeria’s Boko Haram is also raging.

These include Cameroon, whose Far North region, which reaches into the Lake Chad basin, has suffered repeated attacks.

– History archives –

Macron, at a press conference with Biya, said France’s archives on colonial rule in Cameroon would be opened “in full” and hoped historians from both countries would work together to investigate “painful moments”.

French colonial authorities brutally repressed armed Cameroonian nationalists before the country’s independence in 1960.

Macron, 44, is the first French president born after the colonial era and has repeatedly said he will turn the light on dark episodes during colonial rule.

These incidents have also fuelled a narrative by critics who say it is meddling once more in the continent under the guise of security.

Last year, France returned more than a dozen artefacts looted from Benin by colonial forces, soothing a source of friction between Paris and its former possession.

– Africa ‘priority’ –

Macron’s swing through central and western Africa is his first trip to the continent since he was re-elected in April.

France has followed with concern the emergence of Russia, China and others in seeking footholds in an area it still considers part of its sphere of influence.

The tour “will show the commitment of the president in the process of renewing the relationship with the African continent”, a French presidential official, who asked not to be named, said ahead of the trip.

It will signal that the African continent is a “political priority” of his presidency, the official said.

Macron on Tuesday also hit out at “nonsense” that he said had been doing the rounds as a result of the Ukraine war.

“We are being attacked by certain people who maintain that European sanctions (against Russia) are the cause of the world food crisis, including in Africa.

“This is completely false. It’s just that food, like energy, have become Russian weapons of war,” he said.

He hit out at “the hypocrisy, particularly on the African continent” that denied the Ukraine conflict was a war.

Hundreds of protesters rallied on Tuesday against last year’s military coup in Sudan and a recent spike in tribal violence which killed more than 100 people, AFP correspondents said.

Sudan’s main civilian group, the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), which was ousted in the coup, had called for mass demonstrations with hashtags urging co-existence and a “unified nation”. 

In the capital Khartoum, demonstrators were seen carrying the Sudanese flag while chanting “Sudan is a nation for all people!” 

Protesters also chanted “No to tribalism and no regionalism!” while others called on the military “to go back to barracks”, according to an AFP correspondent.

Senior civilian politicians including Mohamed al-Fekki and ex-minister Khaled Omar Youssef, were seen at the demonstrations.

The two men, key leaders of the FFC, were among civilian officials who have been removed from power since the coup.

Some pro-democracy activists and protesters were opposed to the FFC’s participation, saying the rallies should not be overshadowed by partisan motives, AFP correspondents said.

Near-weekly protests and deepening turmoil have rocked Sudan since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan led the coup last October, upending a transition to civilian rule following the 2019 ouster of president Omar al-Bashir.

Sudan has since reeled from a spiralling economic crisis and a broad security breakdown which has seen a spike in ethnic clashes in its far-flung regions.

On July 11, tribal clashes over a land dispute erupted in southern Blue Nile state, leaving at least 105 people dead and 291 wounded.

The clashes between members of the Berti and Hausa ethnic groups have since triggered furious protests in several cities, with Hausa members taking to the streets including in Khartoum to demand justice for comrades who were killed.

On July 4, Burhan pledged to step aside to make way for Sudanese factions to agree on a civilian government, but the FFC dismissed his move as a “ruse”.  

Nigerians, including three presidential candidates, basked in the glory of the country’s first world athletics gold medal, welcoming a respite from bad news about economic hardships and deepening insecurity.

Tobi Amusan, 25, won gold in the women’s 100m hurdles on Sunday in the World Athletics Championships after breaking the world record in a semi-final where she clocked 12.12sec in Eugene, Oregon.

Her winning time of 12.06sec in the final will not be recognised as a world record, however, due to regulations over a strong tailwinds assisting runners. 

President Muhammadu Buhari praised the “outstanding feat by a compatriot and two-time African Games champion, who in one night stunned the athletics world with her superlative and stellar performance”.

He said Amusan’s feat would inspire upcoming generations of Nigerian athletes.

Buhari, who came to power in 2015, will step down after next year’s presidential elections.

The three main challengers in the February ballot also hailed Amusan’s success as well as that of Nigeria’s Ese Brume who won silver medal in the long jump.

Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said he was “particularly proud of this feat… it underscores my plan to refocus investments in sports, and creative sectors, amongst others.” 

Peter Obi of the Labour Party said the athletes’ feats showed Nigeria was “a great country blessed with talents ready to rule the world.”

Ordinary Nigerians also showed their appreciation.

“She has done it for us, Tobi Amusan, you have written your name boldly in our history and posterity will be kind to you. Thank you, Nigeria is proud of you!!!” said Enetomhe Stephen on social media. 

Praise for the athletes comes as Nigeria is struggling with high inflation and unemployment as well as power outages and jihadist and gang attacks, including killings and kidnappings for ransom. 

Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaore, sentenced in absentia to life in jail for the 1987 assassination of revolutionary icon Thomas Sankara, apologised to the ex-leader’s family on Tuesday.

“I ask the Burkinabe people for forgiveness for all the acts I may have committed during my tenure, and especially the family of my brother and friend Thomas Sankara,” he said in a message read out by government spokesman Lionel Bilgo.

Compaore seized power in the West African nation in a 1987 coup that toppled and killed serving leader Sankara.

A Burkina court handed him a life term in absentia in April for his role in the assassination. 

“I take responsibility for, and regret from the bottom of my heart, all the suffering and tragedies experienced by all victims during my terms as leader of the country and ask their families to grant me their forgiveness,” he added.

Compaore, 71, has been living in exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast since being ousted from power by mass protests in 2014.

He returned to Burkina Faso for several days this month, without facing arrest, after the country’s military leader Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba invited him in the name of “national reconciliation”.

The visit sparked an outcry among civil society groups and political parties, who said uniting the nation should not come at the expense of impunity.

Compaore expressed his “deep gratitude” to Burkina Faso’s military-dominated transitional government.

He called on his compatriots to join “a sacred union, tolerance, moderation, but above all forgiveness so that the national interest prevails”.

A fiery Marxist-Leninist who blasted the West for neo-colonialism and hypocrisy, Sankara was gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, little more than four years after coming to power as an army captain aged just 33.

Damiba took power in a January coup that ousted former president Roch Marc Christian Kabore, amid widespread anger at the government’s failure to deal with a bloody jihadist insurgency that spread from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday declared his country would support Africa’s need for security as he began a three-country tour marked by France’s military revamp in the jihadist-torn Sahel.

“We will not relinquish the security of the African continent,” Macron said in a speech in Cameroon, a former French colony and close ally that has been troubled by attacks.

“France remains resolutely committed to the security of the continent, acting in support and at the request of our African partners,” Macron told a gathering of French expatriates in the capital Yaounde.

France is reconfiguring its posture in the Sahel after falling out with the military junta in Mali, the epicentre of a bloody 11-year-old jihadist campaign in the region.

After a pullout from Mali that is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, France’s Barkhane anti-jihadist force will have around 2,500 troops in the Sahel, just under half of the deployment at its peak, say French officers.

The force will also make a tactical shift, acting more in a support role for local forces than in taking the lead, they say.

Macron landed late on Monday on a three-day tour that will also take him to Benin and Guinea-Bissau. 

He headed into a meeting with Cameroon’s 89-year-old president, Paul Biya, an iron-fisted ruler who has been in power since 1982.

In his speech, Macron said the changes in Barkhane had been prompted because “the political framework was no longer there” — a reference to the dispute with the Malian junta.

The reconfigured mission, he said, will extend “beyond the Sahel, to the Gulf of Guinea and second-layer countries which now have to face terrorist groups which are expanding and shaking up the whole region.”

The jihadist insurgency began in northern Mali in 2012 and hit neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.

Across the region, thousands of people have been killed and more than two million have fled their homes.

Sporadic cross-border attacks have also occurred on coastal countries to the south, sparking fears of an expansion by the jihadists to the Gulf of Guinea.

Macron also pledged French support for countries fighting jihadists in the Lake Chad region, where an older insurgency launched by Nigeria’s Boko Haram is also raging.

These include Cameroon, whose Far North region, which reaches into the Lake Chad basin, has suffered repeated attacks.

– Food crisis rebuttal –

Macron also hit out at “nonsense” that he said had been doing the rounds as a result of the Ukraine war.

“We are being attacked by certain people who maintain that European sanctions (against Russia) are the cause of the world food crisis, including in Africa.

“This is completely false. It’s just that food, like energy, have become Russian weapons of war,” he said.

Macron’s swing through central and western Africa is his first trip to the continent since he was re-elected in April.

France has followed with concern the emergence of Russia, China and others in seeking footholds in an area it still considers part of its sphere of influence.

The tour “will show the commitment of the president in the process of renewing the relationship with the African continent”, a French presidential official, who asked not to be named, said ahead of the trip.

It will signal that the African continent is a “political priority” of his presidency, the official said.

Lesotho on Tuesday dropped murder charges against the country’s former prime minister Thomas Thabane and his wife over the 2017 killing of his previous estranged wife Lipolelo.

Prosecutors told a court hearing in the capital Maseru the decision was taken as they could no longer locate a key witness in the case.

“We have been unable to trace an important witness in this matter and the (Director of Public Prosecutions) has decided to withdraw the charges against the accused,” prosecutor Gareth Lappan told the court.

Thabane, 83, was accused of hiring hitmen to kill Lipolelo in June 2017, two days before the prime minister’s inauguration.

The pair had been embroiled in bitter divorce proceedings. 

Both the former premier and his current wife Maesaiah — whom he married two months after Lipolelo was killed — have denied any involvement in the murder.

The killing sparked a political crisis in the mountain kingdom landlocked within South Africa.

Thabane resigned as prime minister in May 2020, giving in to then mounting pressure to step down over the case. 

The decision to drop charges came a week after the instability-plagued country announced it will hold general elections in October.

Police accused Thabane of paying assassins a down payment of $24,000 to kill his wife. 

Five co-defendants in the trial included 45-year-old Maesaiah, who was controversially granted bail in June 2020, and the four suspected hitmen allegedly hired by Thabane.

At least five people have been killed and dozens injured during anti-UN protests in eastern DR Congo, a government spokesman said Tuesday as the unrest spread.

On Monday, hundreds of people blocked roads and chanted hostile slogans before storming the UN peacekeeping mission’s headquarters and a supply base in Goma, the main city in North Kivu province.

Protesters smashed windows and looted valuables, while helicopters airlifted UN staff from the premises and security forces fired teargas in a bid to push them back. 

In a post on Twitter, government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said”at least five people (were) dead, about 50 wounded” in the unrest.

The security forces had fired “warning shots” at protesters to stop attacks on UN personnel, he said. 

The unrest continued on Tuesday, with the fatal shooting of a man near the supplies base, an AFP correspondent saw.

The security forces were pushing back crowds outside the depot as protesters waved placards bearing slogans such as “bye bye MONUSCO”.

Anti-UN protesters also took to the streets in the North Kivu towns of Beni and Butembo, according to witnesses. 

Soldiers were deployed on the road leading to the MONUSCO base in Beni, which lies about 350 kilometres (215) miles north of Goma, while protesters burned tyres. 

Security forces also dispersed protesters who had gathered in front of a MONUSCO base in Butembo, another provincial hub, local sources said. 

– Anger –

The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUSCO, is one of the world’s biggest peacekeeping operations.

But it has regularly come under criticism in the troubled east, where many accuse it of failing to do enough to stem decades-long bloodshed.

More than 120 armed groups roam the volatile region, where civilian massacres are common and conflict has displaced millions of people. 

The killings have continued despite the presence of thousands of UN peacekeepers, sparking bouts of anger among local people. 

In late 2019, nine anti-UN protestors were killed as Beni and Butembo were terrorised by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which the Islamic State group describes as its central African affiliate.

In a statement on Monday, Khassim Diagne, the deputy special representative of the UN secretary general to MONUSCO, said the peacekeepers were there to protect civilians.  

“The incidents in Goma are not only unacceptable but totally counterproductive,” he said. 

– M23 –

The latest protests come after the president of the senate, Modeste Bahati, told supporters in Goma on July 15 that MONUSCO should “pack its bags.”

They coincide with the resurgence of the M23 — a militia that lay mostly dormant for years before resuming fighting last November. 

The rebels have since made significant advances in eastern Congo, including capturing the North Kivu town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border. 

The UN first deployed an observer mission to eastern Congo in 1999. 

In 2010, it became the peacekeeping mission MONUSCO — the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — with a mandate to conduct offensive operations.

It has a current strength of about 16,300 uniformed personnel, according to the UN. 

The peacekeepers have suffered 230 fatalities during the course of their mission. 

President Kais Saied said Tunisia had “entered a new phase” on Tuesday with a new constitution almost certain to pass in a referendum, concentrating almost all powers in his office.

Monday’s referendum came a year to the day after Saied sacked the government and suspended parliament in a dramatic blow to the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

There had been little doubt the “Yes” campaign would win, and an exit poll suggested that votes cast — just a quarter of the 9.3 million electorate — were overwhelmingly in favour.

Most of Saied’s rivals called for a boycott, and while turnout was low, it was higher than the single figures many observers had expected — at least 27.5 percent according to the electoral board, controlled by Saied.

“Tunisia has entered a new phase,” Saied declared as he addressed celebrating supporters in downtown Tunis hours after polling stations closed.

“What the Tunisian people did… is a lesson to the world, and a lesson to history on a scale that the lessons of history are measured on,” he said.

The National Salvation Front, a coalition of Saied’s main opponents, said the draft constitution would enshrine in a “coup d’etat” and that “75 percent of Tunisians have refused to approve a putschist project”.

Saied, a 64-year-old law professor, dissolved parliament and seized control of the judiciary and the electoral commission on July 25 last year.

His opponents say the moves aimed to install an autocracy over a decade after the fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, while his supporters say they were necessary after years of corruption and political turmoil.

– Unchecked powers –

A poll of “Yes” voters by state television suggested “reforming the country and improving the situation” along with “support for Kais Saied/his project” were their main motivations for backing the constitution.

Thirteen percent cited being “convinced by the new constitution”.

Rights groups and legal experts have warned that the draft gives vast, unchecked powers to the presidency, allow him to appoint a government without parliamentary approval and make him virtually impossible to remove from office.

The charter “gives the president almost all powers and dismantles any check on his rule,” Said Benarbia, regional director of the International Commission of Jurists told AFP.

“None of the safeguards that could protect Tunisians from Ben Ali-type violations are there anymore,” he added.

Saied has repeatedly threatened his enemies in recent months, issuing video diatribes against unnamed foes he describes as “germs”, “snakes” and “traitors”.

On Monday, he promised “all those who have committed crimes against the country will be held accountable for their actions”.

Tunisia expert Youssef Cherif tweeted Tuesday that “most people voted for the man, or against his opponents, but not for his document.”

– ‘Back on the rails’ –

Analyst Abdellatif Hannachi said the results meant Saied “can now do whatever he wants without taking anyone else into account.”

“The question now is: what is the future of opposition parties and organisations?”

As well as remaking the political system, Monday’s vote was seen as a gauge of Saied’s personal popularity, almost three years since the political outsider won a landslide in Tunisia’s first democratic direct presidential election.

Hassen Zargouni, head of the Sigma Conseil group that gave the exit poll, said of the 7,500 voters questioned, 92-93 percent of them were in the “Yes” camp.

The turnout, projected at around 22 percent, was “quite good” given about two million people have been automatically added to electoral rolls since the 2019 legislative elections, he told AFP.

Participation in elections has gradually declined since the 2011 revolution, from just over half in a parliamentary poll months after Ben Ali’s overthrow to 32 percent in 2019.

Those who voted “Yes” on Monday did so primarily to “put the country back on the rails and improve the situation,” Zargouni said.

par/dv

President Emmanuel Macron arrived late Monday in Cameroon at the start of a three-nation tour of western Africa as he seeks to reboot France’s post-colonial relationship with the continent.

Macron was welcomed at the airport in Yaounde at around 10:40 pm by Cameroonian Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute.

The first trip of his new term outside Europe, which will also take him to Benin and Guinea-Bissau, should allow Macron to “show the commitment of the president in the process of renewing the relationship with the African continent”, said a French presidential official, who asked not to be named.

Macron is due to hold talks Tuesday morning at the presidential palace with his counterpart Paul Biya, 89, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for nearly 40 years.

They are expected to discuss security in Cameroon, which has been riven by ethnic violence and an insurgency by anglophone separatists who have been fighting for independence for two English-speaking provinces since 2017. Northern Cameroon has also seen attacks by Boko Haram jihadists.

Macron had provoked Biya’s indignation in 2020 after declaring he would apply “maximum pressure” on the president over “intolerable” violence in the West African country.

His visit comes at a time when former colonial power France has seen its influence decline in the face of China, India and Germany, particularly in the economic and commercial sectors.

After lunch with Biya and his wife Chantal, Macron will meet representatives of youth and civil society.

He will end the day in “Noah Village”, hosted by former tennis champion Yannick Noah, who is developing a leisure and education centre in a popular district of Yaounde, where he lives for several months a year.

Macron will move on Wednesday to Benin, which has faced deadly attacks from jihadists, who have spread from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea nations.

Benin was long praised for its thriving multi-party democracy. But critics say its democracy has steadily eroded under President Patrice Talon over the last half-decade.

On Thursday, Macron will finish his tour in Guinea-Bissau, which has been riven by political crises at a time when its president, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, is preparing to take the helm of the Economic Community of West African States.

All three countries have been criticised by activists over their rights records, but the Elysee has insisted that governance and rights issues will be raised, albeit “without media noise but in the form of direct exchanges between the heads of states”.