Africa Business

Protesters stormed a United Nations base in the eastern Congolese city of Goma on Monday, looting valuables and demanding the departure of peacekeepers from the region.

Hundreds of people blocked roads and chanted anti-UN slogans before breaking into the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission in Goma, an important commercial hub of North Kivu province.

The protesters smashed windows and looted computers, furniture and other valuables from the headquarters, an AFP journalist witnessed, while UN police officers fired tear gas in a bid to push them back.

Helicopters airlifted some UN officials from the overrun headquarters.

Protesters also stormed a UN logistical base on the outskirts of the city, where a student was shot in the leg. 

The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as MONUSCO, has come under regular local criticism for its perceived inability to stop fighting in the conflict-torn east.

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

Ahead of Monday’s protest, the Goma youth branch of the ruling UDPS party released a statement demanding MONUSCO “withdraw from Congolese soil without conditions because it has already proved its incapacity to provide us with protection”. 

Khassim Diagne, the deputy special representative of the UN secretary general to MONUSCO, stated after the protest that “the incidents in Goma are not only unacceptable but totally counter-productive,” adding that the peacekeepers were in the region to protect civilians. 

He also told AFP that the people who had entered the base were “looters”. “We condemn them in the strongest terms,” he said.

– ‘What are they still doing here?’ –

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

On Monday, protesters interviewed by AFP appeared to agree with the sentiment. 

“They said they don’t have the strength to fight the M23, now what are they still doing here?” said Shadrac Kambale, a motorbike-taxi driver, referring to a recently resurgent militia.

After lying mostly dormant for years, the group resumed 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. 

Sankara Bin, another protester, told AFP: “We don’t want to see MONUSCO walking in the streets of Goma, we don’t even want to see their planes flying over.”

The UN first deployed an observer mission to eastern Congo in 1999. It became the peacekeeping mission MONUSCO — the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — in 2010, with a mandate to conduct offensive operations.

It has a current strength of about 16,300 uniformed personnel and there have been 230 fatalities among them, according to the UN.

A mass of brown seaweed has for weeks choked the coastline of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, damaging fishing gear and disrupting tourism in a country otherwise known for its white-sand beaches.

The West African state has experienced the phenomenon several times in the past, but local people say the problem seems far worse this year.

“There is an unprecedented deposit this year,” Amidu Kamara, a fisherman at Freetown’s Tambakula wharf, told AFP.

He said dead seaweed had destroyed fishing nets and clogged boat engines.

“We have to move from one spot to the other to escape the seaweed, but it keeps coming”, he added.

The stuff is believed to come from the Sargasso Sea, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, according to Paul Lamin, a director at the government’s Environmental Protection Agency.

“My department received reports from other countries in West Africa where the seaweed was found in March and April this year, but in Sierra Leone it usually occurs during the rainy season and the quantity fluctuates on yearly basis,” he said.

– Business slow –

Normally, Lumley Beach in the west end of the city is packed with young people at the weekends. 

But nowadays it is desolate.

At the Sugarland Beach resort, manager Aruna Foday complained that rotting seaweed had hurt the bottom line.

“We are closing the bar and restaurant for now due to the heavy stench from the seaweed and hope to resume after the rains”, he said. “Business has been slow for us.”

Not all beach-goers were deterred, however.

Mohamed Bangura, 23, was kicking a football around with friends on a recent, overcast Sunday afternoon.

“We use our bare hands to clean up spaces to play football every weekend,” he said, noting that it nonetheless “stinks disgustingly”.

Though July and August — when seaweed normally tends to appear — is the low season for tourism, the National Tourist Board has nonetheless launched a clean-up effort.

“It’s a difficult task because the seaweed keeps coming on an hourly basis,” said general manager, Fatmata Kroma, who appealed for help from the community. 

She noted that man-made waste was also washing up on beaches and posing a further challenge to the tourism industry.

“The ocean is not a dustbin,” she said.

Somalia’s parliament agreed on Monday to give Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre more time to form a government, a month after his appointment in the troubled Horn of Africa nation.

Barre was initially expected to name a cabinet within 30 days of his appointment on June 25 but said the delays were due to the country’s protracted election process that culminated in May with the selection of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as president.

“Today I continued engaging different segments of the Somali population to discuss the formation of my Council of Ministers,” Barre said on Twitter. 

“Somalia is at a crossroads and must move forward. We need to form an administration that can deliver the change and development our people urgently need.”

Observers have voiced hope that Mohamud’s presidency will draw the line under a political crisis that blighted the rule of his predecessor Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, better known as Farmajo, and threatened to plunge Somalia back into violent chaos.

Barre vowed to establish a government within 10 days after parliament approved the extension.

“The prime minister asked for an extension of 10 days, and this seemed credible because… the prime minister is in consultation with other stakeholders,” Mohamed Dhabancad, one of the legislators, told reporters.

The new government will face a host of challenges, including a looming famine and a grinding Islamist insurgency.

A crippling drought across the Horn of Africa has left about 7.1 million Somalis — nearly half the population — battling hunger, with more than 200,000 on the brink of starvation, according to UN figures.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab also continues to flex its muscles by carrying out deadly attacks, underscoring the difficult task ahead for the country’s new leaders.

The militants were driven out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011 by an African Union force but still control swathes of countryside and frequently strike civilian and military targets.

A father who wanted to sell his three albino children for use in witchcraft rituals was arrested in Mozambique before being able to close the deal, police said on Monday.

Police in the northwestern region of Tete, said three children aged nine to 16 were rescued at the weekend after an anonymous tip-off.  Their uncle was arrested alongside their father.

The pair allegedly planned to traffic the minors to neighbouring Malawi where they could be sold for the equivalent of about $40,000, local police spokesman Feliciano da Camara told a press conference.

Both men deny any involvement in the case.

“Investigations were carried out and it was possible to rescue (the) three minors… from captivity,” Câmara said.

Albinism, caused by a lack of melanin, the pigment that colours skin, hair and eyes, is a genetic anomaly that concerns hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.

Some sub-Saharan African countries have suffered a wave of assaults against albinos, whose body parts are sought for witchcraft practices in the belief that they bring luck and wealth.

On June 27, a court in Malawi sentenced a Catholic priest to 30 years and several other people to life over the 2018 murder of a man with albinism.

Judge Dorothy NyaKaunda Kamanga said Thomas Muhosha, who led a parish in Machinga, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northeast of Blantyre, had planned to traffic 22-year-old MacDonald Masambuka’s tissue.

The killing occurred at the height of a spree that saw over 40 people with albinism in Malawi murdered and scores of others assaulted.

One of the five convicted was the victim’s brother.

“The convicts took advantage of the deceased’s psychological need for love,” the judge said. 

“They lured him into believing that they had found a prospective wife for him and that they should go and meet her — that ended up being his death trap.”

Tunisians voted Monday on a constitution seen as a key test for President Kais Saied, who promoted the charter that would give his office nearly unchecked powers in a break with the country’s democracy.

The referendum comes a year to the day after Saied sacked the government and froze parliament in a power grab that his rivals condemned as a coup against the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

His moves were however welcomed by many Tunisians tired of a grinding economic crisis and a system they felt had brought little improvement to their lives in the decade since the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Monday’s vote is widely expected to pass, but turnout will be seen as a test of Saied’s popularity after a year of increasingly tight one-man rule that has seen scant progress on tackling the North African country’s economic woes.

Speaking after voting got underway, Saied told journalists Tunisians faced a “historic choice”.

“Together we are founding a new republic based on genuine freedom, justice and national dignity,” he said. 

He also accused unnamed rivals of distributing money to persuade people not to vote, without giving evidence.

“We will not let Tunisia fall prey to those who are stalking it, from inside and out,” he said.

In the capital, six people waited to vote at a school turned into a polling station, the entrance guarded by two soldiers with assault rifles, alongside a posse of police.

“For me, the referendum is about protecting the country’s future,” said Tarik al-Jmaiei, 42, after casting his ballot.

– All eyes on turnout –

Some 9.3 million out of Tunisia’s 12 million people are eligible to take part, including around 356,000 who began voting overseas on Saturday. 

“The biggest unknown in this referendum is the turnout and whether it will be low or very low,” said analyst Youssef Cherif.

No minimum participation has been set for the constitution to pass, nor any provision made for a “no” result.

Saied’s critics have warned Tunisia risks sliding back towards dictatorship.

Opposition parties and civil society groups have called for a boycott, while the powerful UGTT trade union has declined to take a position.

Saied’s charter would replace a 2014 constitution that was a hard-won compromise between Islamist-leaning and secular forces after three years of political turmoil.

His supporters blame the hybrid parliamentary-presidential system it introduced, and the dominant Islamist-influenced Ennahdha party, for years of political crises and corruption.

Saied’s draft for the constitution was published this month with little reference even to an earlier draft produced by a committee he appointed himself.

Sadeq Belaid, a mentor of Saied who led the process, warned the president’s draft was far removed from that of the committee and risked creating a “dictatorial system”.

A slightly amended version did little to address such concerns.

The new text would place the head of state in command of the army, give him full executive control and allow him to appoint a government without parliamentary approval.

The president could also present draft laws to parliament, which would be obliged to give them priority.

– Revolutionary ‘correction’ –

The draft has been heavily promoted in state media, and billboards bearing the Tunisian flag have appeared exhorting people to vote “yes”.

“People don’t know what they’re voting on, or why,” Cherif said.

Saied, a 64-year-old law professor, won a landslide victory in 2019 presidential elections, building on his image as incorruptible and distanced from the political elite.

He has appeared increasingly isolated in recent months, limiting his public comments to official videos from his office — often diatribes against domestic foes he brands as “snakes”, “germs” and “traitors”.

He has vowed to protect Tunisians’ liberties and describes his political project as a “correction” and a return to the path of the revolution.

“Lots of young people, the marginalised and excluded, are on his side,” said political analyst Hamadi Redissi.

That popularity will continue to be tested in the coming months as Tunisians face soaring inflation, youth unemployment of 40 percent and a looming deal with the International Monetary Fund that observers have warned could lead to more economic pain.

Voting is set end at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT) and results are expected late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Koutaye Niang has been racing in the Saint-Louis regatta for 20 years, but this year’s competition, held Saturday in Senegal’s historic second city, was the “best day” of his life.

Niang — who, like all his teammates, is a fisherman from the coastal city’s Guet N’dar quarter — was the captain of one of three winning pirogues that ended a rival team’s five-year hot streak at this year’s fishing boat race, a traditional event dating back generations.

“All those who live (in my community), Dak, feel like kings today,” the 43-year-old said, radiating with pride and wrapped in the red and green colours of his team’s flag.

The regatta -– held annually in the former capital of colonial French West Africa, some 250 kilometres (150 miles) north of Dakar –- sees hundreds of men board long wooden pirogues to race two-and-a-half kilometres through the estuary where the Senegal River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

The city’s fishermen have been racing recreationally for over a century, but the event became more formalised in the 1950s, according to the president of the organising committee, El Hadj Moctar Gueye.

“There are a lot more people now, and it’s more official,” said N’Deye Seck, 75, a tailor in the N’dar Market. 

Her own father and brothers participated when she was young, and she remembers the former French president Charles de Gaulle attending in 1959, months before Senegal’s independence.

– Ancestral loyalties –

On the eve of this year’s event, Guet N’dar — one of Africa’s most populated neighbourhoods — was buzzing with nervous energy.

Men clad in traditional boubou tunics for Friday prayers and women in elegant “moussor” head wraps jostled in the streets with gleeful children, horse-drawn carts and stray livestock.

On the riverbank, an old man chipped away at wooden planks to fashion oars, while younger men coated them in red and white paint.

Saint-Louis’s fishermen are divided into three teams, each representing a geographical section of the old quarter. Groups of between 50 and 70 people from each team compete in one of three race categories.

Separate races are also held for fishermen from elsewhere around the country.

“It’s a feeling of joy whenever we win,” said Younouss Dieye, a rower with the Pondou Khole team who has been competing in the regatta for over a decade. 

He said he trained for 10 days before the race.

At sunrise on Saturday, young men played wooden “tam tam” drums and spectators danced and blew plastic whistles as the narrow fishing boats, measuring between 15 and 20 metres, were launched into the water. 

The previous day’s boubous were replaced by colourful sports tops, with the number 23 jersey of American basketball player Lebron James ubiquitous in the Pondou Khole community, whose team colours are yellow and blue.

Nearby, a vendor sold bucket hats and bowties in the same colours.

– ‘The blood that flows’ –

Further down the riverbank, in the Dak community, spiritual leaders burned incense and smashed packets of ice where boats were launched.

“This is the only truly local sport here,” said Assane Diaw, a former competitor whose family has been racing for about 100 years. 

“We have football teams, but the pirogue race is uniquely Saint-Louisien.”

He said his grandfather’s generation competed in the same boats they used for fishing, but nowadays the teams use specially made racing pirogues.

As for the prize, he said: “It’s the love that people have… it’s the blood that flows.”

By afternoon, tens of thousands of onlookers had gathered along the river.

Young people clamoured up the arches of the Faidherbe Bridge, which links the island city to Senegal’s mainland, for a better view.

Elated Dak supporters jumped into the river when their team won the first and second races, the victors waving oars and beating their chests before tipping their boats over and plunging in themselves.

Mid-way through the final event, tensions boiled over when Pondou Khole — the reigning champions — began to squabble with Dak rowers in the water.

But nothing could dim captain Niang’s mood, or the glow in his eyes as he sat peacefully with his family back in the old town that evening.

“Guet N’dar is a village where everyone lives together — we share everything”, he said, the sun setting behind him as the evening call to prayer rang out.  

“We are one and indivisible -– all three teams are really family.”

Angolan President Joao Lourenco’s quest for re-election couldn’t come at a worse time, analysts say, with the recent death of his strongman predecessor, a struggling economy and soaring poverty looming large. 

Lourenco is seeking a second term in the August 24 vote, which observers predict will be the tightest since the oil-rich country emerged from a lengthy civil war two decades ago.

The excitement that accompanied the 68-year-old’s rise to power in 2017 has “largely dissipated”, said Alex Vines, who heads the Africa programme at British think tank Chatham House.

Many in the Portuguese-speaking country of 33 million people are yet to see the benefit of economic reforms, and feel Lourenco’s anti-corruption drive has fallen short of its promises. 

Polls show waning support for his People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which has ruled the country since 1975.

“The people are suffering, they live in garbage cans. Are these people going to vote for the outgoing president? I don’t think so,” said Joao Afonso, a 60-year-old accountant in the capital Luanda.

An Afrobarometer survey in May found the opposition National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was trailing the MPLA by just seven percentage points, with around half of voters still undecided.

On the streets of Luanda, Lourenco portraits vie for space with UNITA’s red and green flags.

UNITA’s leader Adalberto Costa Junior, commonly known as ACJ, has modernised the former rebel militia turned political force and broadened its base, joining forces with other parties.

“He is a very charismatic leader who is able to engage with young people in the cities,” said Marisa Lourenco, an analyst at the consultancy Control Risks.

“There will be pressure on Lourenco if the MPLA doesn’t perform well,” she added.

– Deepening poverty –

On Saturday, thousands of MPLA supporters wearing red T-shirts gathered in Camama, outside Luanda, for the opening campaign rally where Lourenco promised new hospitals and transport links. 

“We still believe in him and we will certainly emerge victorious in these elections,” said Luisa Andre Valente, an unemployed 29-year-old at the event.

Handpicked by his predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Lourenco promised to usher in a new era for Angola after winning 61 percent of the vote in 2017.

He quickly turned on the former strongman, starting an anti-corruption drive to recoup the billions allegedly embezzled by dos Santos and his family.

Having inherited an oil-dependent economy deep in recession, he also launched an ambitious reform plan to differentiate revenue streams and privatise state-owned firms.

But many have come to see the anti-graft push as selective and politically motivated.

And while reforms have won praise abroad, little has changed for millions of Angolans who struggle to put food on the table amid soaring inflation and the worst drought in 40 years. 

Some Angolans now feel nostalgic about their former leader, who died in Spain earlier this month.

“When dos Santos left, there was a sense that this man brought us to a level of decay… but now after five years, they look at dos Santos in relative terms,” said Paula Cristina Roque, an independent political analyst specialising in Angola.

“We’ve seen a deepening of poverty and socioeconomic injustice,” she said.

Dos Santos’s death reignited a public spat between Lourenco and the old revolutionary leader’s children — several of whom have faced an array of corruption investigations.

This week, some of dos Santos’s children finally agreed to have their father buried in Angola, but only after the vote.

Observers expect to see voting violations — while the country has opened up in recent years, it is still ranked as “not free” by democracy watchdog Freedom House.

“Those in power will never leave,” said Felix Kaputu, a professor specialising in African studies at Bard College in the United States. 

Tobi Amusan became the first Nigerian athlete to win a World Athletics Championship gold as she stormed to victory in the women’s 100m hurdles in Oregon on Sunday.

Amusan, who had obliterated the world record in an astonishing semi-final where she clocked 12.12sec, powered over the line at Hayward Field in 12.06sec.

Her winning time will not be recognised as a world record, however, due to a strong following win of 2.5 metres per second.

Jamaica’s Britany Anderson took silver in 12.23sec, while Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico claimed bronze in 12.23.

Amusan had produced a jaw-dropping world record in the semi-finals, smashing the previous best mark of 12.20secs held by Keni Harrison of the United States since 2016.

Harrison had been left in Amusan’s slipstream in the semi, and was again shown a clean pair of heels by the Nigerian in the final.

Amusan got off to a scorching start and was smoothly into her stride after the first hurdle, building a clear lead and then pulling away ahead of Anderson and the fast-closing Camacho-Quinn.

A case involving several former rugby union players diagnosed with early onset dementia and other irreversible neurological conditions now appears destined for the courts.

Rylands Law, acting on behalf of a group of players including England’s 2003 World Cup-winning hooker Steve Thompson and former Wales captain Ryan Jones, are to take action against World Rugby, England’s Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union.

Britain’s Press Association reported proceedings would be issued on Monday, with the parties unable to agree a settlement since a pre-action letter of claim was issued to the same governing bodies on behalf of a group of nine players in December 2020.

The basis of the action is an alleged failure by rugby authorities to protect players from concussion risks.

Jones, capped 75 times by Wales and a member of the 2005 British and Irish Lions squad in New Zealand, revealed his diagnosis of early onset dementia in an interview with the Sunday Times last week.  

“I feel like my world is falling apart,” the 41-year-old, who said he was “really scared”, told the newspaper. “I don’t know what the future holds.”

One of Kenya’s two leading presidential candidates, Raila Odinga, will not take part in an upcoming electoral debate, his campaign team said Sunday, accusing his principal rival of trying to avoid certain topics such as corruption.

Odinga, 77, a former prime minister, and Deputy President William Ruto, 55, are the leading contenders in the August 9 presidential poll.

But in a statement announcing Odinga would boycott Tuesday’s debate, his campaign spokesman accused Ruto of trying to dodge discussion of key issues.

Ruto “has demanded that the debate not focus on corruption, integrity, ethics, and governance — the key existential questions that Kenya faces”, Odinga’s spokesman said in the statement.

“Any debate devoid of these questions would be an insult to the intelligence of Kenyans. That is why we do not intend to share a national podium with a person who lacks basic decency,” he added.

Instead, Odinga plans to take part in a televised town hall meeting in an eastern neighbourhood of the capital Nairobi with “ordinary Kenyans”, according to the statement.

The organisers of the debate said that they “continue to engage all stakeholders, including the various presidential campaign teams”.

“In accordance with the Presidential Debate Guidelines, we have shared the thematic areas with all the candidates and the moderators will endeavour to cover all the said topics within the set timeline,” the statement said.

The debate, scheduled for six hours, would still proceed on Tuesday, the organisers added.

– ‘Fair opportunity’ –

Odinga’s announcement follows a letter sent Thursday by Ruto’s director of communications to the debate organisers.

It said that he was “ready to answer any question and speak to any matter that arises during the debate” but added that his attendance was “contingent” on certain matters.

“We expect that the moderators will allocate equal time to issues affecting Kenyans and equally allow candidates a fair opportunity to address them,” the letter said.

“To that end we wish to know in advance the number of minutes that will be allocated to respective interventions including, but not restricted to governance and integrity, agriculture, healthcare, MSMEs and manufacturing, housing, the digital economy, foreign policy, and so on and so forth,” it continued.

The debate organisers have insisted that “the moderators will select the questions to be asked, and shall NOT share the same with the candidates”. 

“They will NOT meet with any of the campaign teams or the candidates,” they added in the statement.

Sitting President Uhuru Kenyatta cannot run again and has endorsed Odinga over his deputy of nine years after an acrimonious falling out.