Africa Business

A rights group on Wednesday said Moroccan and Spanish authorities were responsible for a horrific border tragedy last month in which two dozen migrants died.

It resulted in the highest migrant death toll in years of attempts to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla, one of the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.

“The tragedy of June 24 cost the lives of 27 migrants and was due to unprecedented repression by the Moroccan authorities, with the complicity of their Spanish counterparts,” Omar Naji of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) told journalists in Rabat.

Moroccan authorities have said 23 migrants died when some 2,000 people, many from Sudan, stormed the frontier.

Naji, presenting a report on the deaths, called it “a despicable crime, the result of deadly migration policies”.

The report accuses Moroccan forces of “massive use of tear gas” as migrants tried to enter a cramped border post or scale the barbed wire-topped metal barrier. 

“The decision to violently attack the asylum seekers once they arrived at the barrier is probably the main cause behind the very heavy toll,” the report reads.

Morocco’s state-backed CNDH rights group said last week that 23 migrants had died, mostly likely from suffocation, in a crush at a border post where manual turnstiles allow the passage of a single person at a time.

The CNDH said videos apparently showing security forces beating prone migrants were “isolated” cases.

But the AMDH linked the incident to a resumption in cooperation between Madrid and Rabat in March after a year-long diplomatic spat.

Since then there has been a sharp uptick in Moroccan police raids of migrant camps in the forest near the border, it said.

It added that Spanish authorities had “turned back about 100 migrants” on June 24, while some 64 are still missing.

Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez initially blamed “human trafficking mafias” for what he said was “a well-organised violent assault” on the frontier.

But Naji dismissed that as part of a “discourse of criminalisation” of migrants, pointing out that those at the Melilla frontier were attempting to cross “free of charge, unlike those who try to cross by sea”.

A Moroccan court on Tuesday sentenced 33 migrants to 11 months in jail for “illegal entry”, while a separate trial of 29 migrants including a minor is set to resume on July 27. 

Mali is expelling the spokesman of the UN’s peacekeeping force in the country over posts he made on Twitter, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

MINUSMA spokesman Olivier Salgado has been given 72 hours to leave over “tendentious and unacceptable” posts he made concerning a controversy involving Ivorian troops, it said in a statement received by AFP.

The expulsion comes amid mounting friction between Mali’s ruling military and international partners supporting the country’s fight against jihadists.

The issue over Salgado, a French national, relates to 49 troops from Ivory Coast who were detained after landing at Bamako airport on July 10.

The authorities have accused the troops of being “mercenaries”.

But Ivory Coast says they were sent to provide a support role for MINUSMA, under a routine rotation.

Countries that provide contingents to MINUSMA commonly bring in “national support elements”, or NSEs, who help with supplies and other backup functions.

According to Mali’s version of events, the troops had no mission orders or any authorisation to enter the country.

The foreign ministry accused Salgado of Twitter posts “declaring without any proof that the Malian authorities had been previously informed” of their arrival.

MINUSMA, it said, was asked to provide evidence to support Salgado’s assertions but had given no reply.

The UN secretary general’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said the UN “deeply” regretted the Malian decision.

“The doctrine of ‘persona non grata’ does not apply to United Nations personnel and is contrary to obligations under the Charter of the UN,” he said.

“MINUSMA and UN Headquarters are taking appropriate measures to follow up with the relevant authorities on this matter.”

– Security crisis –

The incident takes place against a backdrop of problems in Mali, one of Africa’s poorest and most unstable countries.

Thousands of people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in a jihadist campaign that began in northern Mali in 2012 and spread to Niger and Burkina Faso three years later.

Colonels angry at the government’s handling of the insurgency seized power in August 2020 and carried out another coup in May 2021.

Their takeover triggered a long standoff with the regional bloc ECOWAS over a timetable for restoring civilian rule.

The coup also led to a spat with France, Mali’s former colonial ruler, which says the junta has hired Russian “mercenaries” to support it.

France’s anti-jihadist mission in the Sahel is now pulling out of Mali. The operation is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

– UN force –

MINUSMA — the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali — was launched in 2013.

It is one of the UN’s biggest peacekeeping operations, with 17,609 troops, police, civilians and volunteers deployed as of April, according to its website. 

It is also one of the most dangerous UN missions, with 275 fatalities from attacks, accidents or other causes, according to the website.

The UN Security Council renewed MINUSMA’s mandate for one year on June 29, although the junta opposed requests to allow freedom of movement for rights investigators with the mission.

Four days after the row flared over the Ivorian troops, Mali announced it was suspending rotations of MINUSMA personnel for “national security” reasons.

The suspension will last until a meeting is held to “facilitate the coordination and regulation” of the rotation of contingents, it said. So far, no date has been set for any talks.

The following day, MINUSMA said that Egypt, its biggest troop contributor, had decided to “temporarily suspend” participation in operations after seven of its personnel were killed this year.

On Wednesday, a group called Yerewolo that is reputedly close to the junta handed over a letter at MINUSMA headquarters in Bamako demanding that the mission leave the country.

It described MINUSMA as having become “an occupation force which incites and maintains fear.”

An analyst in Bamako, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the friction between MINUSMA and the Malian authorities was following “the same path” as that with France.

The pattern, he said, was “blocking foreign contingents, challenging the legal framework (for the mission) and then expelling a high-profile symbolic figure.”

France’s ambassador was expelled in January, at around the same time that Denmark was told to withdraw a newly-arrived unit that was part of a fledgling European force. 

Lesotho says it will hold general elections on October 7, in the latest round of polling in the landlocked southern African country plagued by instability.

The date was contained in a proclamation signed by King Letsie III and in a separate notice issued by the head of the country’s electoral commission, Mpaiphele Maqutu. Both were dated July 19 but published on Wednesday. 

Final results are set to be published the day after polling.

A mountainous kingdom of more than 2.2 million people entirely surrounded by South Africa, Lesotho has suffered repeated bouts of instability and army interference in politics.

The elections were announced after King Letsie III last week dissolved parliament, in line with procedures to prepare for new polls.

The outgoing parliament had failed to pass a law on electoral reform aimed at ending political volatility.

The proposed changes would have prohibited lawmakers from switching party allegiance within the first three years of their tenure.

They would also have named the king as commander of the armed forces — a move aimed at preventing political leaders from meddling in the security services.

Under the system still in place, lawmakers elect a prime minister to head government, who usually comes from the party with the majority in the 120-seat parliament.

Between 2012 and 2017, Lesotho held three elections that resulted in fractious coalitions and turbulence.

The last government saw then premier Thomas Thabane forced to step down after he was accused of hiring hitmen to kill his estranged wife, Lipolelo, two days before his inauguration.

He resigned in 2020 and was succeeded by his finance minister at the time, Moeketsi Majoro.

Thabane and his younger wife Maesaiah, also accused in the case, are yet to face trial over the murder.

No premier has served out a full five-year term over the past decade in the kingdom, which is a constitutional monarchy ruled by King Letsie III, who has no formal power.

Ethnic clashes in a deadly land dispute in Sudan’s Blue Nile state has killed 105 people and wounded 291, the state’s health minister said Wednesday, providing a new toll.

Fighting broke out in the southern state which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan on July 11 between members of the Berti and Hausa ethnic groups.

Troops were deployed in the state on Saturday to stop the fighting, and “the situation is now calm,” state health minister Jamal Nasser told AFP.

“The challenge now is in sheltering the displaced,” Nasser said, speaking by telephone from the state capital al-Damazin, some 460 kilometres (285 miles) south of Khartoum.

The United Nations said Tuesday that more than 17,000 people have fled their homes from the fighting, with 14,000 “sheltering in three schools in al-Damazin.”

But regional Hausa leader Mohamed Noureddine said he believed the death toll would rise further, with some people missing following the heavy fighting, which has seen houses torched.

“We cannot determine the number of victims, since there are corpses trapped under rubble,” Noureddine said, who called from Blue Nile to speak to reporters at a press conference in Khartoum.

Another senior Hausa leader, Hafez Omar, accused local officials of being behind the violence, claiming that “government weapons” were used in the violence.

“We hold the governor responsible for what happened,” Omar said, accusations rejected by the authorities.

– Economic crisis –

In Sudan, deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock and access to water and grazing, especially in areas still awash with weapons left over from decades of civil war.

The violence is the latest unrest to hit the northeast African nation, already reeling from months of mass demonstrations demanding the restoration of a transition to civilian rule following a military coup last year.

Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries and mired in an economic crisis that has deepened since an October coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has seen only rare interludes of civilian rule since independence.

Fighting in Blue Nile reportedly broke out after Bertis rejected a Hausa request to create a “civil authority to supervise access to land”, a prominent Hausa member said.

But a senior Berti leader said the group was responding to a “violation” of their land by the Hausas.

Between January and March this year, the UN said aid was provided to 563,000 people in Blue Nile, a region still struggling to rebuild after years of heavy fighting during Sudan’s devastating 1983-2005 civil war.

The latest violence in Blue Nile has sparked protests, with Hausa people taking to the streets in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday demanding “justice for the martyrs.”

Thousands of Hausa also protested Tuesday in the key eastern cities of Gedaref, Kassala and Port Sudan, as well as El Obeid in North Kordofan.

Between January and March this year, the UN said aid was provided to 563,000 people in Blue Nile.

West African mediators were in Guinea Wednesday for talks with the ruling junta on a return to civilian rule, a source at the Guinean presidency and an official with the regional bloc said.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who seized power last September, has pledged to restore civilian rule within three years.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which suspended Guinea after the coup, has rejected this timeline.

The acting head of ECOWAS, Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, as well as the president of the bloc’s commission, Gambian diplomat Omar Alieu Touray, landed in Conakry on Wednesday, a source at Guinean president’s office told AFP.

The ECOWAS mediator for Guinea, Benin’s former president Thomas Boni Yayi, has been in the Guinean capital since Tuesday, an official from the West African bloc said.

The three men were set to meet Doumbouya as well as foreign diplomats.

The head of Guinea’s main political party, former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, on Wednesday sounded the alarm over what he called a “dangerously growing list of breaches of fundamental rights.”

The National Alliance for Change and Democracy (ANAD), which comprises about 20 organisations, separately protested against a “travel ban” being imposed on opposition leader Oumar Sylla.

Sylla, a member of the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), had been set to take part in a West African civil society gathering in Senegal from Tuesday to Thursday, but his group said he was prevented from boarding the plane.

The Guinean authorities declined to comment.

Sylla was among three members of the FNDC found not guilty on contempt of court this month over comments they had posted on social media criticising the prosecutor’s office and the military-appointed parliament.

Their arrest had sparked violent protests, some of the first since Doumbouya toppled president Alpha Conde last year.

The ruling junta had banned political protests in May.

US President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will welcome African leaders to Washington in December, a new initiative to build ties with the continent where China’s influence has been rising.

Biden said he will hold the summit from December 13 to 15 to “demonstrate the United States’ enduring commitment to Africa.”

“The US-Africa Leaders Summit will build on our shared values to better foster new economic engagement,” Biden said in a statement.

The meeting will also “reinforce the US-Africa commitment to democracy and human rights” and tackle Covid-19 and future pandemics as well as climate change and food security, Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the summit during a visit in November to Nigeria without giving a date.

The summit comes as China — identified by the Biden administration as the leading US rival — as well as Russia and Turkey sharply increase their presence in Africa.

The US foreign aid chief, Samantha Power, on Monday urged China to do more to address the global food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as she announced more than $1 billion to avert starvation in the parched Horn of Africa.

China, with its quest for natural resources and an infrastructure spending blitz, has increased investments to Africa some 100-fold since the Asian power’s integration into the global economy in 2000 and has regularly met with African leaders.

US allies France, Britain and Japan have also been holding routine summits with African leaders.

Biden did not specify the guest-list for the Africa summit. When former president Barack Obama held a similar summit in 2014, he invited the vast majority of leaders but declined to include Central African Republic, Eritrea, Sudan and Zimbabwe due to human rights and democracy concerns.

The summit marks a return of high-level US attention after the presidency of Donald Trump, who made no secret of his lack of interest in sub-Saharan Africa.

You can’t do your work because there’s no power. You eat late and bolt your food before the lights fail. And then to be at home, in the utter dark, gives you the creeps.

As blackouts unfurl across South Africa, triggered by problems that have overwhelmed its energy provider, stress is taking a mounting toll on mental health, experts say.

“People are frustrated, some (are) angry, some are experiencing symptoms” of post-traumatic stress disorder, said Sinqobile Aderinoye, a psychologist in Johannesburg.

“The consistent on-and-off of the electric grid is creating an air of disillusionment.” 

South Africa has struggled for years with power cuts, known here as load-shedding, as as its monopoly utility Eskom failed to keep pace with demand.

But ageing infrastructure and labour disputes have added to the crisis — and in recent weeks, the country has been hit by rolling blackouts that can last up to nine hours a day. 

“There was a time … I felt like I was going to scream,” said Blessed Dlamini, a 25-year-old father living in downtown Johannesburg.

For five hours, he recalled, he had no power as he struggled to work and at the same time deal with a hungry two-year-old.

“It was very, very hectic,” said Dlamini who works for a sexual health centre.

Blackouts eased this week, with cuts reduced to about two hours a day. 

But the schedule of cuts provided by Eskom is not always followed, giving rise to an unpredictability that leaves many people on edge. 

The crisis “is leading to feelings of hopelessness, which is associated with depression,” said Claire Lownie, a psychiatrist in Johannesburg’s financial centre, Sandton.

– Fight-or-flight-

Plunged into darkness with a sense of unmet basic needs, the human brain can be triggered into survival mode, leading to a fight-or-flight response, explained Aderinoye. 

“The brain starts to think we are under attack. The body is then notified that we are in danger and we create an anxiety response,” she said. 

At work, on the streets or around the dinner table, swapping tips on how to cope with blackouts has become a national pastime. 

Some people prefer the romantic feel of candles to light their homes, while others resort to camping lanterns. 

Others debate whether coughing up money for take-out meals is preferable to investing in gas cookers or simply eating at odd hours. 

Yet, in a country burdened by high crime rates, outages aren’t a simple inconvenience. Fear of burglary, assault or rape runs deep.

“You cannot go around when it’s dark,” said Flora Sithole, 30, a domestic worker employed in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank. 

“We are so afraid of that — it’s not safe. Our country is not safe.”

The added stress caused by power cuts often compounds an already precarious situation, psychologists say.

Anxiety, depression and other disorders were already up almost two-thirds since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Cheryl Johnston, a Johannesburg-based psychologist.

“A lot of people are at or crossing over (their) breaking point,” she said. 

The result can be “abnormal behaviour” as well as angry or violent outbursts, Johnston said. 

Having a plan and being prepared to deal with the cuts is the best way to cope, according to health experts. 

Dlamini said he has joined Twitter to follow the city’s electricity updates more closely.

Better mental health awareness is also crucial, Johnston said.

“Being able to be honest with yourself about the emotions that you’re having and waiting for yourself to be calm before taking action… is best thing you can do,” she said.

Major challenges lie ahead for African leaders seeking to breathe new life into the G5 Sahel anti-jihadist force.

The five-nation mission began operations in 2017, showcased as an unprecedented example of cooperation in one of the world’s troubled regions.

But the force — originally gathering Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — has achieved meagre results and the Sahel’s security crisis continues to deepen.

Added to this have been two hammer blows, delivered in quick succession this year.

In April, 1,200 Chadian soldiers based in Niger left in secret for N’Djamena, according to G5 and French military officials.

The following month, Mali announced it would leave the group over a dispute with France, forcing all the force’s commanders to abandon their base in Bamako and relocate to the Chadian capital N’Djamena. 

“They left overnight, leaving everything behind, even the cars,” a G5 official told AFP.

“The G5 is dead,” Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, told the French newspaper La Croix in May.

But last week, he and President Mahamat Idriss Deby of Chad sounded a different tone, announcing an upcoming meeting between the force’s four remaining members to “ensure that the G5 is viable.”

“We have not yet considered that it is over for the G5 Sahel — we will fight,” Bazoum said. “Let’s remain optimistic.”

– An immense task –

The regional grouping began with an ambitious idea to create a joint military force that would go hand in hand with development projects.

The force was largely financed by the European Union (EU) and its operations were supported by France. 

It represented, in the eyes of international partners, a solution in a region plagued by jihadist violence.

Its eight battalions comprised about 5,000 troops, based in their own countries, with the exception of a Chadian battalion deployed in Niger. They were tasked with coordinating operations in the hotspot border areas.

There are numerous reasons for its decline, two G5 officials told AFP.

These include chronic underfunding, disparate political will among member countries and regional politics.

Mali has undergone two coups in two years, and there have been military takeovers in Burkina Faso and Chad.

In 2021, Chad was meant to hand the G5 presidency over to Mali but did not — a move that Bamako interpreted as French interference.

Paris is reputedly close with N’Djamena, and Mali’s ruling junta, led by Colonel Assimi Goita, lashed the G5’s “instrumentalisation” before slamming the door.

“It would be hard not to see the French hand behind this refusal to transfer the presidency,” said Malian researcher Boubacar Haidara.

The G5 Sahel “has been perceived since the beginning as being controlled by Paris,” said Ornella Moderan, from the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

But, she said, it has above all “suffered from variable political support from one member state to another.”

Since the creation of the G5, “there have been no joint operations between Burkina and Mali, let alone between Niger and Mali,” Niger’s foreign minister, Hassoumi Massoudou, said last week.

– A ‘necessary tool’ – 

In Burkina Faso, people are questioning “the survival of the G5,” according to a source close to the authorities, although no departure is in sight. 

Despite the force’s travails, Burkinabe troops in the G5 have continued to operate with the Nigeriens in recent months. 

“There is no other option than to work together,” said a member of the joint force.

“Can the G5-Sahel pull through?” asked Mahamat Saleh Annadif, a senior UN official.

“I can’t say, but in any case, by design, it remains a necessary tool.”

But how can the remaining four states be convinced to stay without the participation of Mali, whose territory is the epicentre of the conflict? 

“Being a member of the G5 brings money and logistical support from partners — the states know that,” said an African diplomat in Bamako.

The diplomat said the UN provides G5 contingents with fuel and food — things that are always needed for troops, whether or not they are wearing the G5 badge.

For Massoudou, the G5 Sahel’s future lies with Bamako. 

“When Mali has democratically elected authorities who normalise relations with its neighbours, we could revive this organisation,” he said.

Mali’s military junta has bust up with France and its relationship with the UN peacekeeping mission is also suffering friction.

And it has only just turned the page on a political tussle with the regional bloc ECOWAS over its return to civil rule. Delayed elections are now scheduled for February 2024.

The West African state of Benin says it will auction off art, luxury furniture and a Rolls-Royce limousine seized from an opposition tycoon who lives in exile in Paris.

On August 9, auctioneers in Cotonou, the country’s economic hub, will put under the hammer 140 items belonging to Sebastien Ajavon, who has been handed a 20-year sentence on drugs charges.

The sale includes a Rolls-Royce whose starting price is 80 million CFA francs ($122,339), the judicial branch of Benin’s finance ministry said in a statement late Tuesday.

The property was taken from Ajavon’s home in central Cotonou on July 1 by tax agents, who cleared out the premises working under a heavy police and military escort.

Ajavon made a fortune in agribusiness before entering politics.

He ran in the March 2016 presidential elections as an independent, arriving in third place in the first round of voting.

In the runoff vote, Ajavon threw his support behind another successful businessman, Patrice Talon, who eventually won.

Ajavon’s electoral foray caused relations with Talon — who was already a competitor in business — to go quickly downhill

In October 2016, Ajavon was arrested after around 18 kilogrammes (39.6 pounds) of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $14 million, was discovered in a freight container that was being shipped to one of his companies.

He was discharged several months later for lack of evidence.

But in 2018 a special court handed him a 20-year jail term in absentia.

The conviction was branded illegal by the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, but Benin has refused to overturn it.

Ajavon was handed a second conviction, with a five-year jail sentence, in March 2021 for alleged fraud and use of fake documents.

Talon, who made his fortune in the cotton industry, was re-elected last year on the back of a campaign that touted his record of economic reform.

But critics say his economic success has gone hand-in-hand with iron-fisted rule that has devastated one of the region’s most vibrant political cultures.

Some opposition figures have fled the country while others have been disqualified from running in elections or targeted for probes, they say.

India and Namibia signed a deal Wednesday to bring cheetahs into the South Asian country, with the first batch of eight wild cats set to arrive next month, officials said.

India has been working to relocate the animals since 2020, when the Supreme Court announced that African cheetahs could be introduced in a “carefully chosen location” on an experimental basis.

India in the past had Asiatic cheetahs, but the species was officially declared extinct within the country by 1952.

The deal inked Wednesday will see Namibia’s African cheetahs flown in next month to a wildlife sanctuary in the central state of Madhya Pradesh for captive breeding — a move expected to coincide with India’s 75th Independence Day celebrations. 

“Completing 75 glorious years of Independence with restoring the fastest terrestrial flagship species, the cheetah, in India, will rekindle the ecological dynamics of the landscape,” India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav tweeted.

“Cheetah reintroduction would also greatly enhance local community livelihoods through eco-tourism prospects in the long term.”

Signed in New Delhi with Namibia’s deputy prime minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, the deal will also see the two countries collaborate in areas of climate change, waste and wildlife management. 

The Kuno-Palpur National Park in Madhya Pradesh state was selected as the new home for the cheetahs because of its abundant prey base and grasslands which were found suitable for the felines.

“The main goal of cheetah reintroduction project is to establish viable cheetah metapopulation in India that allows the cheetah to perform its functional role as a top predator,” the environment ministry said in a statement.

The cheetah is the only large carnivore believed to have gone extinct in India, primarily due to hunting for its distinctive, spotted pelts and habitat loss.

Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo is widely believed to have killed the last three recorded cheetahs in India in the late 1940s. 

India is also planning to ship in some cheetahs from South Africa but a formal pact has yet to be signed.

Considered vulnerable under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the cheetah has a declining population of less than 7,000 — found primarily in African savannas.