Africa Business

African countries on Monday called for an end to a “climate injustice” saying the continent causes less than four percent of global CO2 emissions but pays one of the highest prices for global warming.

Government officials, international organisations, NGOs and the private sector from more than 60 African nations attended Monday’s opening of Africa Climate Week in Gabon’s capital to prepare for the COP27 UN climate conference in Egypt in November.

Host President Ali Bongo Ondimba told the gathering the continent has to speak with one voice and offer “concrete” proposals for COP27.

“The time has come for Africans to take our destiny into our own hands,” he said, deploring the global failure to meet climate targets.

“Our continent is blessed with all the necessary assets for sustainable prosperity, abundant natural resources… and the world’s youngest and largest working population,” he said.

“But Africa and the rest of the world must address climate change,” when the UN’s intergovernmental climate panel IPCC “describes Africa as the most vulnerable continent.

“Droughts are causing extreme famines and displacing millions of people across the continent,” Bongo said.

“Today, 22 millions of people in the Horn of Africa face starvation because of the drought and famine, countries in the south of the continent are regularly hit by cyclones, rising sea levels threaten cities such as Dakar, Lagos, Capetown and Libreville.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, head of COP27, which will be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, said: “Despite contributing less than four percent of global emissions”, Africa was “one of the most devastated by the impacts of climate change.

“Also, Africa is obliged, with limited financial means and scant levels of support, to spend about two to three per cent of its GDP per annum to adapt to these impacts,” Shoukry said, calling it a “climate injustice”.

Denouncing the failure of developed countries to deliver on their climate commitments, he warned: “There is no extra time, no plan B and there should also be no backsliding or backtracking on commitments and pledges.”

Fighting was reported in a volatile area of northern Ethiopia on Monday, local sources said, despite urgent international appeals for a halt to the renewed hostilities between government forces and Tigrayan rebels.

The warring sides have accused each other of launching attacks last Wednesday that torpedoed a five-month truce and dealt a blow to hopes for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation.

On Monday, clashes were reported in an area around the town of Kobo, which lies in the Amhara region just south of Tigray and fell into the hands of rebel fighters at the weekend, prompting many residents to take flight.

“There is heavy fighting nearby. I was hearing the sounds of heavy weaponry starting from morning to around 3:00 pm (1200 GMT),” one Kobo resident told AFP on condition of anonymity after fleeing to Woldiya about 50 kilometres (30 miles) further south.

The resident said many people were flocking from nearby areas to the town, some sleeping on verandahs, while the authorities were allowing some of the displaced to be housed in university dormitories.

“There is currently an air of uncertainty in Woldiya although it’s slightly calmer than yesterday,” the resident said, adding that the town was currently under a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had announced Saturday that federal forces had pulled back from Kobo in order to avoid “mass casualties”.

In turn, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting government forces and their allies for almost 22 months, said it had captured a number of towns and cities in a counter-offensive.

The various claims could not be independently verified as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted.

– ‘I saw people drowning’ –

A diplomatic source said there were clashes in an area about halfway between Kobo and Woldiya on Monday, while a humanitarian source reported “heavy fighting” around the Zobel mountains southeast of Kobo.

Tigist, a 30-year-old mother of three, said she fled Kobo on Friday across a river as the bridge was destroyed, helped by people with light rafts transporting women and children over the water.

“I’m very lucky, I saw people drowning while attempting to cross the river,” she told AFP, a day after finally arriving in Woldiya on Sunday.

“We’re not getting help (from the authorities) in Woldiya, so people are helping each other for food, water, shelter.”

She said people were terrified and were considering travelling further from the combat zone to Dessie, a major city about 100 kilometres (60 miles) further south.

“I don’t know if I ever want to move back to Kobo.” 

The first displaced resident said ambulances were ferrying the wounded to medical facilities inside Woldiya or further afield, adding that the injured included federal troops, members of the Amhara regional force and the Amhara militia known as Fano.

– ‘Outraged’ over renewed fighting –

On Friday, as conflict on the ground escalated, an air strike on Tigray’s capital Mekele killed at least four people including two children, an official at the city’s biggest hospital told AFP.

Tigrai TV, a local network, put the death toll at seven, including three children.

The international community has voiced deep alarm about the resumption of fighting in a conflict that has already caused the deaths of untold numbers of civilians and led to a desperate humanitarian crisis.

A truce was declared in March, leading to a lull in fighting that allowed aid convoys to slowly return to Tigray, where the UN says millions are nearing starvation, and cash, fuel and medicine are in short supply.

Since the end of June, Abiy’s government and the rebels have repeatedly stated their willingness to enter peace talks but disagreed on the terms of such negotiations.

Among the latest to express concern was the UN-appointed International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia.

It said it was “outraged” about the renewal of hostilities and called for both sides to cease fighting, return to dialogue and enable humanitarian agencies to distribute aid in Tigray.

A similar plea was made by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, an independent state-affiliated body, which said the hostilities resumed as “civilian populations in the affected areas still continue to suffer from recent trauma, loss of loved ones and livelihoods”.

A senior military officer who became a graft buster and turned on his political patron upon seizing power, Angolan President Joao Lourenco has won a second term, but the victory was not a walk in the park.

The 68-year-old secured a new mandate in the tightest vote held in the oil-rich country on August 24.

Lourenco leads the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which has ruled the country for nearly half a century after sweeping to power in 1975.

His victory was officially confirmed 24 hours after he buried his predecessor, the country’s long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain last month after an illness.

Handpicked by dos Santos, Lourenco took over in 2017. That year his party won with a comfortable 61 percent of the votes. This time he swung back to office with just 51 percent.

He had promised sweeping reforms and a crackdown on corruption.

But as the results showed, support for the Soviet-educated former general has faded as the oil-rich country grapples with soaring poverty, inflation, drought and unemployment. 

Lourenco “promised more transparency, less corruption and inclusive governance”, said Borges Nhamirre, a consultant at the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think tank.

“Now his governance is seen as authoritarian.”

– Political purgatory –

Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco was born in 1954 in Lobito, in western Angola.

As a young man, he fought against the then colonial power Portugal. Then, after Angola won its independence in 1975, he fought in the civil war that erupted between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels.

Lourenco studied in the former Soviet Union, which trained many rising young African nationalists during decolonisation.

He became political chief of the armed wing of the MPLA in the civil war — a Cold War proxy conflict that drew in Cuban forces to fight alongside the MPLA, while CIA-backed militias did battle against them.

In 1984, he was appointed governor of the eastern province of Moxico.

The ex-artillery general quickly rose through the MPLA hierarchy, leading the party’s group in parliament before becoming deputy speaker.

Yet his ambition almost ended his career. Unable to hide his angling for the top job, he was sidelined by dos Santos around the turn of the millennium. 

After years in the political wilderness, he was brought back from the cold and appointed defence minister in 2014. Two years later, he was designated for the country’s top job.

– Anti-graft drive –

After winning the 2017 elections, Lourenco quickly turned on his predecessor, starting an anti-corruption drive to recoup the billions allegedly embezzled by dos Santos’ 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.

While he has made much of his successes so far, many of Angola’s 33 million people still struggle to put food on the table. They face soaring inflation and the worst drought in 40 years.

Some have also come to see Lourenco’s anti-graft push as selective and politically motivated, which has fuelled divisions within the ruling party.

Dos Santos’s death in Spain in July added to the president’s woes, triggering a public spat with the veteran revolutionary leader’s children — several of whom face an array of corruption investigations. 

Between national voting and the vote tallying, Lourenco’s government buried Dos Santos on what would have been his 80th birthday. Some of his children, including the oldest daughter and businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, stayed away.

The change in tack from the previous regime has won praise abroad, where the Lourenco’s standing remains good. 

Lourenco has become the go-to mediator in Africa’s Great Lakes region, whether tackling crisis in the Central Africa Republic, or brokering talks between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

Back home, he promised to open dialogue with various sections of society after the tight vote.

He is married to Ana Dias, a former planning minister who also represented Angola at the World Bank. They have six children.

Eight people have been killed and more than 800 displaced by torrential rain and a landslide in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, authorities said Monday, warning of further damage as rains continue.

The downpours hit the city over the weekend, causing a landslide Sunday in Looking Town area.

Four men, one woman and a seven-year-old girl died in the landslide, according to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).

Two men were also killed in the Mount Aureol and Blackhall Road neighbourhoods when fences collapsed onto buildings, the agency said.

In the Colbert community, more than 800 people were displaced by flash flooding, Mohammed Bah, a NDMA spokesman, told AFP.

“The landslide was due to the heavy rain, no doubt, but also a combination of illegal human activities”, Bah said.

“People are cutting down trees, tampering with the forest cover… The mudslide that occurred is mainly a result of the fact that people are building (houses) beyond demarcated zones.”

Authorities have asked residents to evacuate the disaster area in Looking Town, which is surrounded by hills, due to a “very big boulder” that is poised to fall, Bah said.

President Julius Maada Bio blamed the disaster partly on climate change.

“The heavy downpour experienced this August points to the impact and consequence of global warming and climate change”, he tweeted on Sunday night.

“But years of poor urban planning and mismanagement of the city’s resources are an enormous contributor to flooding across Freetown”.

Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, who visited the flood victims, warned that more extreme events could be expected due to climate change.

“This is something we all need to be aware of,” she said.

She cited a 2019 study showing that 85 percent of buildings lacked permits and said more needed to be done to raise awareness and stop people cutting down trees or blocking drainage channels. 

Sierra Leone is regularly hit by floods and landslides that have affected hundreds of thousands of people and caused severe economic damage over the past 20 years, according to the World Bank. 

The West African country’s rainy season typically lasts from May to October.

– Deforestation –

Sierra Leoneans this month marked the fifth anniversary of a devastating mudslide that killed more than 1,000 in Freetown’s Regent district.

On August 14, 2017, part of the Sugar Loaf mountain detached and slid onto informal settlements, crushing shacks and enveloping entire households in red mud.

Experts fear it could happen again.

“Continued deforestation for charcoal burning and building houses in mountain slopes may likely be the main causes for the next mudslide disaster if urgent steps are not taken”, Anthony Toban Davies, head of the environmental management company Ecosys Sierra Leone Limited, told AFP.

The Sierra Leone Meteorological Agency said better equipment, such as radar, flood forecasting software and trained meteorological technicians, is needed to prevent future mudslides.

After the 2017 disaster, the government reacted by planting some 2,200 mango, banana, avocado and moringa trees.

It set up the National Disaster Management Agency in 2020 and has been cracking down on illegal housing on mountainsides.

“We have 60 disaster-prone settlements in slums and mountain areas within Freetown, and we are working on sustainable mitigation measures through awareness raising mechanisms,” the agency’s deputy director, John Rogers, had told AFP this month.

Angola’s MPLA party was on Monday declared the winner of a closely fought election, extending its decades long rule in the oil-rich country and handing President Joao Lourenco a second term.

He promised to be the “president of all Angolans” and to open dialogue after the electoral commission announced the results, which saw the opposition make large gains. 

“This a victory for Angola and Angolans in general,” Lourenco, 68, said in his inaugural address shortly after the unveiling of the result of the August 24 ballot. 

“This vote was a vote of confidence, which gives us the immense responsibility of promoting dialogue and social consultation”.

The National Electoral Commission (CNE) reported the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola won 51.17 percent of the ballots against 43.95 percent for the main challenger, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Despite the victory, the outcome — the tightest in Angola’s history — marked a record low for the MPLA and might yet end up in court after UNITA had earlier rejected provisional results.

Several members of the electoral commission did not sign off on the final tally, poll officials said on Monday. 

The MPLA has traditionally wielded control over the electoral process as well as state media, and opposition and civic groups had raised fears of voter tampering.

UNITA leader Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, last week called for an international panel to review the count.

International observers have raised some concerns including questions over the electoral roll and biased reporting by state-owned television, but most said voting was peaceful and well organised. 

– Lowered majority –

The MPLA, a former Marxist liberation movement, has ruled Angola for nearly half a century since independence from Portugal in 1975.

But it has seen a steady decline in support over recent elections.

While it romped to victory with 71.84 percent of the vote in 2012, it only garnered 61 percent five years later.

UNITA scored 26.67 percent in 2017 elections and contested the official count.

Alex Vines, of the UK-based think tank Chatham House, said that while UNITA was likely to challenge the count also this time, the former rebel movement had reasons to be happy. 

“It’s an amazing result for UNITA when you think that 20 years ago, they were defeated on the battlefield,” he said.

“Politics will have to change in Angola now. There’s going to have to be the politics of compromise,” he said.   

The results gave the MPLA 124 of the 220 parliamentary seats up for grabs while UNITA won 90. 

Turnout was low, with only about 45 percent of those registered  casting their ballots, which pointed to a growing disillusionment with politics, said Vines. 

The United States on Monday called on all parties “to express themselves peacefully and to resolve any grievances in accordance with applicable legal processes”.

“We will continue to closely follow the electoral process,” the State Department said in a statement before the final results were announced.

– Second term –

The latest election has been overshadowed by a struggling economy, inflation, poverty, drought and the death of Lourenco’s predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Dos Santos was buried in Luanda at a solemn funeral on Sunday.

The opposition has proved popular in urban areas, winning in the capital Luanda and among youth disaffected with the ruling party.

Angola is Africa’s second largest crude producer, but the oil bonanza has been accompanied by corruption and nepotism.

Lourenco, a former general educated in the Soviet Union, was first elected in 2017.

He is credited with far-reaching reforms since taking power, including boosting financial transparency, tackling graft, and promoting business-friendly policies to lure foreign investors.

But critics say his anti-graft crusade has been one-sided and aimed at settling political scores, targeting children and cronies of dos Santos.

His economic reforms have also so far failed to translate into better living conditions for most Angolans, critics say.

“With this vote of confidence, it is time to continue the reforms necessary to make Angola a more prosperous and more developed country,” Lourenco said, promising to pay particular attention “to the expectations of young people”. 

Fighting was reported in a volatile area of northern Ethiopia on Monday, local sources said, despite urgent international appeals for a halt to the renewed hostilities between government forces and Tigrayan rebels.

The warring sides have accused each other of launching attacks last Wednesday that torpedoed a five-month truce and dealt a blow to hopes for a peaceful resolution to the brutal conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation.

On Monday, clashes were reported in the area around the town of Kobo, which lies in the Amhara region just south of Tigray and fell into the hands of rebel fighters at the weekend, prompting many residents to take flight.

“There is heavy fighting nearby. I was hearing the sounds of heavy weaponry starting from morning to around three pm,” one Kobo resident told AFP on condition of anonymity after fleeing to Woldiya about 50 kilometres (30 miles) further south.

The resident said many people were flocking from nearby areas to the town, while ambulances were ferrying the wounded to medical facilities inside Woldiya or further afield.

“There is currently an air of uncertainty in Woldiya although it’s slightly calmer than yesterday,” the resident said, adding that the town was currently under a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

The government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had announced Saturday that federal forces had pulled back from Kobo in order to avoid “mass casualties”.

In turn, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been fighting government forces and their allies for almost 22 months, said it had captured a number of towns and cities in a counter-offensive.

The various claims could not be independently verified as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted.

A diplomatic source said there were clashes in an area about halfway between between Kobo and Woldiya on Monday, while a humanitarian source reported “heavy fighting” around the Zobel mountains southeast of Kobo.

On Friday, as conflict on the ground escalated, an air strike on Tigray’s capital Mekele killed at least four people including two children, an official at the city’s biggest hospital told AFP.

Tigrai TV, a local network, put the death toll at seven, including three children.

The international community has voiced deep alarm about the resumption of fighting in a conflict that has already caused the deaths of untold numbers of civilians and led to a desperate humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

French-Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz was back in court in Switzerland on Monday seeking to clear his name by appealing against his conviction in one of the mining sector’s biggest-ever corruption cases.

The 66-year-old businessman was found guilty in January 2021 of setting up a complex financial web to pay bribes to ensure his company could obtain permits in Guinea’s southeastern Simandou region, which is estimated to contain the world’s biggest untapped deposits of iron ore.

He was sentenced by a Geneva court in 2021 to five years in prison and also ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation.

Wearing a dark blue suit and flanked by a new defence team, Steinmetz arrived at the courthouse as a free man.

He has not begun serving his sentence, since he was issued a legal free-passage guarantee to attend the first trial. 

He has been issued another for his appeal, which is set to last until September 7 with the verdict due at a later date.

Steinmetz, who maintained his innocence throughout the original trial, changed his lawyers and beefed up his communications team for the appeal.

– ‘Bought’? –

His new lead lawyer Daniel Kinzer presented an impassioned opening statement, detailing a long line of alleged missteps, errors and misunderstandings in the trial, including accusing the prosecution of relying on coerced and even “bought” testimonies to build its case.

“I am confident the appeals court can be convinced,” he told AFP before the hearings. “We expect that the tribunal recognises that Beny Steinmetz did not bribe anyone.”

During the original trial, Swiss prosecutors convinced the court that Steinmetz and two partners had bribed a wife of the then Guinean president Lansana Conte and others in order to win lucrative mining rights in Simandou.

The prosecutors said Steinmetz obtained the rights shortly before Conte died in 2008 after about $10 million was paid in bribes over a number of years.

Conte’s military dictatorship ordered global mining giant Rio Tinto to relinquish two concessions that were subsequently obtained by Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) against an investment of  $160 million.

Just 18 months later, BSGR sold 51 percent of its stake in the concession to Brazilian mining giant Vale for $2.5 billion.

But in 2013, Guinea’s first democratically-elected president Alpha Conde launched a review of permits allotted under Conte and stripped the VBG consortium formed by BSGR and Vale of its permit.

The defence insists there was nothing inappropriate about how BSGR obtained the permits, maintaining that Rio Tinto lost half the concessions for failing to develop them.

They were then “awarded to BSGR on the basis of a solid and convincing business case, with no need to bribe a public official,” Kinzer told AFP.

– ‘Pact of corruption’ –

To secure the initial deal, prosecutors claimed Steinmetz and representatives in Guinea entered a “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth wife Mamadie Toure.

Toure, who has admitted to having received payments, has protected status in the United States as a state witness.

Kinzer told the court that much of the prosecutor’s case had relied on her testimony, despite no insight into the “opaque” US deal, and asked that her testimony be deemed inadmissible.

His co-counsel Christian Luscher meanwhile highlighted concerns around the handling of the case by Claudio Mascotto, the prosecutor initially in charge of the investigation, suggesting he had struck a deal with another witness in the case, and asking that he be questioned in court.

He also pointed out that Mascotto had once shared a law practice with the court president, Catherine Gavin, warning of “a problem of appearances”.

Lead prosecutor Yves Bertossa responded angrily to such arguments, accusing the defence of attacking anyone involved in the case.

“They will stop at nothing to try to find a procedural flaw,” he told the court, insisting the case rested on a massive amount of evidence beyond Toure’s testimony, slamming allegations of purchased testimony as laughable.

“The only ones who tried to buy Mamadie Toure,” he insisted, “were Beny Steinmetz and Frederic Cilins,” one of two alleged co-conspirators who are also appealing against previous convictions.

Eight people have been killed and more than 800 displaced by torrential rain and a landslide in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, authorities said Monday, warning of further damage as rains continue.

The downpours hit the city over the weekend, causing a landslide Sunday in Looking Town area.

Four men, one woman and a seven-year-old girl died in the landslide, according to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).

Two men were also killed in the Mount Aureol and Blackhall Road neighbourhoods when fences collapsed onto buildings, the agency said.

In the Colbert community, more than 800 people were displaced by flash flooding, Mohammed Bah, an NDMA spokesman, told AFP.

“The landslide was due to the heavy rain, no doubt, but also a combination of illegal human activities”, Bah said.

“People are cutting down trees, tampering with the forest cover… The mudslide that occurred is mainly a result of the fact that people are building (houses) beyond demarcated zones.”

Authorities have asked residents to evacuate the an area of Looking Town, which is surrounded by hills, due to a “very big boulder” that is poised to fall.

President Julius Maada Bio blamed the disaster partly on climate change.

“The heavy downpour experienced this August points to the impact and consequence of global warming and climate change”, he tweeted on Sunday night.

“But years of poor urban planning and mismanagement of the city’s resources are an enormous contributor to flooding across Freetown”.

Freetown mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr tweeted that her heart went out to the families of the dead.

The World Food Programme said on Twitter it is supporting the NDMA’s emergency response efforts.

– Deforestation –

Sierra Leoneans this month marked the fifth anniversary of a devastating mudslide that killed more than 1,000 in Freetown’s Regent district.

On August 14, 2017, part of the Sugar Loaf mountain detached and rolled onto informal settlements, crushing shacks and enveloping entire households in red mud.

Experts fear it could  happen again.

“Continued deforestation for charcoal burning and building houses in mountain slopes may likely be the main causes for the next mudslide disaster if urgent steps are not taken”, Anthony Toban Davies, head of the environmental management company Ecosys Sierra Leone Limited, told AFP.

The Sierra Leone Meteorological Agency said better equipment, such as radar, flood forecasting software and trained meteorological technicians, is needed to prevent future mudslides.

After the 2017 disaster, the government reacted by planting some 2,200 mango, banana, avocado and moringa trees.

It set up the National Disaster Management Agency in 2020 and has been cracking down on illegal housing on mountainsides.

“We have 60 disaster-prone settlements in slums and mountain areas within Freetown, and we are working on sustainable mitigation measures through awareness raising mechanisms,” the agency’s deputy director, John Rogers, had told AFP this month.

The West African country’s rainy season typically lasts from May to October.

South African prosecutors said on Monday they had arrested several former executives at public logistics company Transnet, a firm at the centre of a high-profile investigation into corruption during ex-president Jacob Zuma’s tenure. 

South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said Transnet’s former chief executive officer Brian Molefe and finance chief Anoj Singh were among four people held in connection with a multimillion-dollar corruption case.

“Several arrests of former Transnet executives have been effected this morning, through arrangement with their legal representatives,” the NPA said in a statement. 

The arrested appeared before a court in Johannesburg on Monday and were granted 50,000 rand (about $3,000) bail. 

An NPA spokesperson confirmed to AFP the executives are facing charges of fraud and breaching public finance regulations, linked to a 93-million-rand corruption and fraud case surrounding the 2015 procurement of more than 1,000 locomotives.

Transnet owns all South Africa’s rail, ports and pipelines — the logistical backbone of the continent’s most advanced economy.

Lawyers for Molefe and Singh said their clients intended to plead not guilty. They were ordered to return to court on October 14.

A report into state graft under Zuma published earlier this year described Transnet as a “primary site” of state corruption.

The investigation led by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo found billions of rands’ worth of contracts had been “irregularly awarded for the benefit of entities linked to the Gupta family,” a business family of Indian migrants with close ties to Zuma.

The four-year graft probe concluded that Transnet became a cash cow for the Guptas who moved to South Africa in 1993.

The web of corruption that hollowed out state companies is commonly referred to as “state capture” in South Africa.

In a statement, the prosecution said the arrests mark “a critical move in closing the circle… (and) holding to account all those who are alleged to have been at the core of state capture in Transnet”.

The opposition Democratic Alliance party welcomed the arrests, saying they hoped they were the “beginning of justice”.

“While others have already been charged in this case, it seems that the last chickens have now finally come home to roost,” the party’s shadow minister for justice Glynnis Breytenbach said in a statement.

In war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, national park authorities are hoping a football academy will persuade youngsters to take up the Beautiful Game rather than a rifle.

Around 50 children aged between 10 and 16 have signed up to the Virunga youth football training scheme at a stadium in Rumangabo, a village in North Kivu province which borders a military base and the Virunga National Park.

It is the oldest national park in Africa, famed for its gorillas and volcanoes. 

Monkeys look on intrigued as the children are put through their paces, with drills, games and advice.

An estimated 120 armed groups roam the DRC’s volatile east. The resurgence in the region of the M23 (the March 23 Movement), a primarily Congolese Tutsi group, is of primary concern.

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

M23, which the DRC government accuses Rwanda of funding, is operating just six kilometres away from Rumangabo and poses a constant threat.

“They are there in the hills, yesterday they pillaged a health centre,” said Gentil Karabuka, a prominent community member.

Young people born in a chaotic and violent environment have proved easy pickings for rebel groups looking to recruit new members.

But Dieu Boyongo, the coordinator of the football project, hopes it will be a beneficial alternative for the youngsters.

“We think that this football school, situated in a conflict zone, is a positive occupation for them,” Boyongo said.

Boyongo wants the young people on the project to leave violence and misery far behind them, replacing the sound of bullets with the roar of the crowd.

The budding footballers are enjoying the project so far.

“I would like to play for Real (Madrid) or PSG (Paris Saint-Germain),” said 13-year-old Esdras before swapping his torn trousers for a new football strip.

Gloire, also 13, dreams of having a “career like Cristiano Ronaldo,” the five-time Ballon D’Or winner.

– ‘Together in peace’ –

The organisers believe team sport is also a way to deliver a message about peace, and make the children aware of the park’s conservation efforts.

One young spectator has absorbed this idea. “I want to become a park guard, in order to protect the gorillas and other animals,” nine-year-old Narcisse said.

Emmanuel Bahati Lukoo, chief of the southern sector of the park, hopes others will leave with the same resolve.

“When we speak of the east of the country most people only see young people who are with the armed rebels,” he told AFP.

“But we do not want these stories to continue.

“It is imperative that the young understand the park is a means for them of developing as people.”

They can develop as footballers too, according to one of the coaches who oversee training. 

“The ambition is to produce very good young players here at Rumangabo,” Prince Katsuva told AFP.

“We will begin teaching them the technical fundamentals and in five to six months we will have a good team.

“We want to show everyone that we can live together in peace.”

Before the inaugural match, Katsuva told his proteges to pass on a message when they return to their communities.

He hammered home that people should stop poaching and trading in charcoal from the park.

The authorities at Virunga also employ people displaced by the fighting. They live at the entrance of the headquarters in huts, which covered in either tarpaulins or banana leaves offer little protection from the cold and rain.

They are employed as day workers, which guarantees them something to eat, while others have seen their children recruited by the football academy.