Africa Business

Prince Charles laid a wreath on Wednesday at a memorial to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda during the first visit to the country by a British royal. 

The Prince of Wales and his wife Camilla paused in silent tribute at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, the final resting place for more than 250,000 victims of the massacres almost three decades ago.

The royal couple signed a note of remembrance to accompany a wreath of white flowers. 

They also spoke with survivors of the genocide in which some 800,000 mainly Tutsi people were murdered by Hutu extremist forces between April and July 1994.

Housing skulls, bone fragments and shreds of clothing, the memorial is a testimony to the horrors of the genocide and a customary stop for foreign dignitaries visiting Rwanda.

Charles and Camilla also toured the memorial museum where they viewed photographs of the victims and their possessions, and heard personal accounts of the killings. 

The royal couple touched down late Tuesday in Rwanda where the Prince of Wales is representing his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, at a Commonwealth summit this week.

The leaders of many Commonwealth nations are expected in Kigali in the coming days for the meeting of the 54-member club of mainly former British colonies.

Rwanda, a former German and Belgian colony, joined the Commonwealth in 2009 and has in recent years moved closer to the English-speaking world.

Charles and Camilla also met President Paul Kagame and First Lady Jeannette Kagame at the Rwandan leader’s official residence on Wednesday.

The royals and their hosts smiled for photographs flanked by the flags of their respective countries before commencing a private meeting.

Ahead of the Commonwealth summit, Charles had reportedly criticised a migrant resettlement deal hatched between Kagame and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as “appalling”, setting the scene for an awkward encounter in Kigali.

The UK government said Wednesday it would introduce legislation allowing it to ignore certain European Court of Human Rights decisions after a judge in Strasbourg blocked flights removing asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Inaugurated in 2004 during the 10th anniversary of the killings, the Kigali Genocide Memorial has an education centre, a garden, library, and a 1,200-seat amphitheatre that hosts workshops, plays, and films.

It contains three permanent exhibitions and clubs, machetes, arrows and other tools used in the massacres are on display.

The victims’ remains are laid out in three main rows and more have been buried as new graves are uncovered around the country.

At the burial ground, there is a Wall of Names dedicated to victims of the genocide.

A tiny nation with a tumultuous history indelibly marked by a gruesome genocide, Rwanda has undergone a dramatic turnaround in recent decades but is dogged by criticism over rights abuses and lack of political freedoms.

The former German and Belgian colony is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) this week, 13 years after it joined the club of mainly former British colonies.

– The 1994 genocide –

On April 6, 1994, president Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, killing him as he returned to Kigali from peace talks with Tutsi rebels who had been waging an insurgency since 1990. 

It unleashed a genocide orchestrated by the ruling Hutu extremists. An estimated 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were slaughtered before Paul Kagame’s rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took power.

The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try those accused of conducting the genocide. It tried several dozen people before wrapping up its work in 2015. Trials have also been held in Belgium, France and Rwanda itself.

– ‘Land of a thousand hills’ –

The “land of a thousand hills” lies in central Africa’s Great Lakes region and is home to almost 13 million people, one of the most densely populated countries on the continent.

The Hutus are the majority ethnic group, followed by the Tutsi, and the Twa pygmies, a minority group.

The World Bank has hailed the landlocked nation for “impressive development gains” since the genocide and said it hopes to achieve Middle Income Country status by 2035.

Rwanda has become a destination for conferences, sports tournaments and other events, billing itself “Africa’s Singapore”.

The economy grew by 10.9 percent last year, after the Covid pandemic drove it into recession in 2020, with services the main contributor ahead of agriculture and industry.

– ‘Grave’ rights concerns – 

While Rwanda lays claim to being one of the most stable countries in Africa, rights groups accuse Kagame of ruling in a climate of fear, stifling dissent and free speech.

Kagame became president in April 2000, although he has been regarded as de facto leader since 1994.   

He was returned to office — with more than 90 percent of the vote — in elections in 2003, 2010 and 2017. His most recent victory followed controversial constitutional amendments that allowed him to serve a third term and could see him rule until 2034.

Ahead of CHOGM, rights groups issued an open letter to Commonwealth leaders voicing “grave concerns” about the rights situation.

“Commentators, journalists, opposition activists, and others speaking out on current affairs and criticising public policies continue to face abusive prosecutions, enforced disappearances or have at times died under suspicious circumstances,” they said.

– Tricky ties – 

Rwanda has a tempestuous relationship with several of its neighbours, including Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.

After Kagame’s RPF took power, over one million Rwandan Hutus fled to Zaire, now the DRC. Kinshasa often accuses Rwanda of sending in troops and supporting armed militias on its soil. Rwanda meanwhile says its giant neighbour is a rear-base for groups hostile to Kigali.

Although ties improved under Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, tensions have heightened recently over the resurgence of the M23 rebel group.

Relations with Uganda were also strained over mutual accusations of espionage, kidnapping and support for rebels, but there has been a rapprochement this year.

Rwanda won its independence in 1962. Under Kagame it has moved closer to the English-speaking world, joining the Commonwealth in 2009, ironically at the same time France restored ties after a three-year break. 

Kigali has long accused Paris of complicity in the genocide, charges denied by France although a 2021 report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron found it bore “serious and overwhelming responsibility” for the bloodletting. 

– Gorillas in the mist –

Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park boasts hundreds of mountain gorillas, with numbers increasing thanks to stronger security measures and efforts to win over local villagers.

A 2015 census found there were more than 1,000 in the Virunga mountain range straddling Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC, and Uganda’s Bwindi Forest. They are now listed as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, while other great apes remain “critically endangered”.

In the 1980s decades of poaching had caused the mountain gorilla population to plunge to just 250 across the Virunga massif. Famed American primatologist Dian Fossey was murdered in Rwanda in 1985, allegedly because of her anti-poaching efforts. Her autobiography “Gorillas in the Mist” inspired the Hollywood film.

Monkeypox may soon have a new name after scientists called for a change to dispel stereotypes of Africa being seen as a crucible of disease.

The World Health Organization announced last week that it is “working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades and the disease it causes.” 

Monkeypox’s clades, which are different branches of the virus’ family tree, have been particularly controversial because they are named after African regions.

Last year the WHO officially named Covid-19 variants after Greek letters to avoid stigmatising the places where they were first detected.

Just days before the WHO announced it would change monkeypox’s name, a group of 29 scientists wrote a letter saying there is an “urgent need for a non-discriminatory and non-stigmatising nomenclature” for the virus.

The letter, signed by several prominent African scientists, called for the names of the “West African” and the “Central African” or “Congo Basin” monkeypox clades to be changed.

Until a few months ago, monkeypox had largely been confined to West and Central Africa.

But since May, a new version has spread across much of the world. The letter’s signatories suggested naming this version as a new clade, giving it “the placeholder label hMPXV” — for human monkeypox virus.

Out of the more than 2,100 monkeypox cases recorded globally this year, 84 percent were in Europe, 12 percent in the Americas and just three percent in Africa, according to the WHO’s latest update last week.

– ‘Not a monkey disease’ –

Oyewale Tomori, a virologist at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria, said he supported changing the name of monkeypox’s clades.

“But even the name monkeypox is aberrant. It is not the right name,” he told AFP.

“If I were a monkey, I would protest because it’s not really a monkey disease.”

The virus was named after it was first discovered among monkeys in a Danish lab in 1958, but humans have mostly contracted the virus from rodents.

The letter pointed out that “nearly all” outbreaks in Africa were sparked by people catching the virus from animals — not from other people.

But the current outbreak “is unusual in that it is purely spreading through human to human transmission,” said Olivier Restif, an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge. 

“So, it is fair to say that the current outbreak has very little to do with Africa, in the same way that the Covid-19 waves and variants we’re still being battered by have little to do with the Asian bats from which the virus originally came a few years ago.”

– ‘Stigmatisation of Africa’ – 

Moses John Bockarie of Sierra Leone’s Njala University said he agreed with the call to change monkeypox’s name.

“Monkeys are usually associated with the global south, especially Africa,” he wrote in The Conversation.

“In addition, there is a long dark history of black people being compared to monkeys. No disease nomenclature should provide a trigger for this.”

Restif said it was “important to highlight that this debate is part of a larger issue with stigmatisation of Africa as a source of disease.”

“We’ve seen it most strikingly with HIV in the 1980s, with Ebola during the 2013 outbreak and again with Covid-19 and the reactions to the so-called ‘South African variants’,” he told AFP.

An African press group has also expressed “its displeasure against media outlets using images of black people alongside stories of the monkeypox outbreak in North America and the United Kingdom.

“We condemn the perpetuation of this negative stereotype that assigns calamity to the African race and privilege or immunity to other races,” The Foreign Press Association, Africa tweeted last month.

Restif pointed out that the “old stock photographs of African patients” used by Western media usually depict severe symptoms. 

But the monkeypox spreading around the world “is much milder, which partly explains how easily it gets transmitted,” he said.

The WHO will announce the new monkeypox names “as soon as possible”, its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The UN agency is also holding an emergency committee meeting on Thursday to assess whether the outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern — the highest alarm it can sound.

Wambesso Fankam stands out elegantly from the crowd at a funeral ceremony in western Cameroon.

As a prince, he’s among a select few who are traditionally entitled to wear an eye-catching fabric of vivid indigo with intricate white patterns.

“It’s an ndop, not everyone can wear it,” he said with pride, to the beat of tam-tam drums and the balafon, a type of xylophone, in the western town of Batie.

The ceremonial cloth was once the preserve of chiefs, dignitaries and members of secret societies in the central African country.

But the culture around it is now being threatened by cheap imitations and crude rip-offs.

Ndop’s distinctive motifs — often animals or geometric shapes — are drawn on cotton fabric then embroidered with raphia before the material is dyed blue.

Its richness is down to the many different combinations of symbols that can be designed on the ndop.

Cameroon is thought to have 13,500 traditional chiefdoms across its 10 regions.

And it is the north and the mountains of the west where chiefs are seen as all but divine guardians of tradition, where ndop and its culture is the strongest.

Once warlords and masters of justice, these days chiefs’ powers are limited to inheritance or matrimonial disputes.

Even so ndop is “the most important ritual element” among the main western tribal group, the Bamileke, said Hermann Yongueu, head of the Sauvons le Ndop (Save the Ndop) group, which is trying to preserve its heritage.

Making the cloth is a costly affair that takes several days’ work and requires specialised knowledge.

Prices for a piece of ndop cloth can go up to 100,000 CFA francs (about 150 euros) — a small fortune in Cameroon where a third of the population lives on less than two euros a day.

– Royal garb –

Back in Batie, an ndop cloth is symbolically hung on a wooden fence at the main entrance to the funeral.

One woman is wearing a long  dress entirely in ndop.

“She is one of the few to wear an ndop outfit because she is a queen,” said Gisele Monkam, who accompanies the traditional chief.

Ndop mostly features “drawings that symbolise our way of life”, said Arsene Ngandjouong, head of a museum in the village of Bangoua in the west of the country.

One of the principal motifs is “a circle which represents the duality of the Bamileke world, a communication between the living and the dead,” he added.

Sitting near the door of her house make of baked mud bricks in Baham, the main town high on the western plateau where ndop is still made, craftswoman Solange Yougo, 52, is busy on a piece of fabric she’s been working on for over a week.

Making ndop is extremely laborious, with some long pieces measuring up to 15 metres taking up to a month to complete.

“I’m adding the finishing touches,” she said. The finished item will be white with an indigo tint.

On a bamboo bench, her cousin, Sylvie Momo, 50, holds an already dyed piece.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Arts and Culture declared ndop a part of its official national heritage in February 2020 and some also want it to be given UNESCO status as further protection.

– ‘Vulgar’ –

For hile it was once strictly reserved for royals and nobles, ndop has been fast losing its exclusivity, so much so that some of its motifs are now turning up on bottles of beer as well as low quality wraps and boubous, the loose unisex garment popular across West Africa.

“It is even becoming a bit vulgar,” complained museum head Ngandjouong. 

“In the past when someone who hadn’t the right to wear ndop wore it, they had to pay a fine,” said Prince Fankam.

“But the most important thing is that we pass on knowledge of how to make it,” said Hermann Yongueu. “Before ndop fabric was controlled by the chiefs and the kings made sure that the savoir-faire was passed on to the makers’ children. From the age of seven, children began their apprenticeships.”

But today few young people are prepared to take that on, preferring more lucrative jobs like driving motorbike taxis. 

Others hope that a little of the reflected glory the fabric is picking up abroad might tempt them back, with the French luxury fashion house Hermes using ndop motifs in one of its silk scarf collections four years ago.

A troupe of barefoot musicians wearing the national colours of Burundi strike huge wooden royal drums with tremendous force, precision and unabashed joy.

Twirling and singing, a stick in each hand, the performers are the custodians of a centuries-old ritual recognised by UNESCO, and one jealously guarded by the Burundian state.

Too jealously guarded, according to some.

“We beat the drum because it’s our life, because it’s in our blood,” said their leader Oscar Nshimirimana, his face dripping with sweat after a spirited performance in Gishora against a backdrop of rolling green hills.

“It was not only my father who beat the drum, but all my great-grandparents,” the 43-year-old said.

Troupes hailing from Gishora — home of a royal palace and the heartland of this musical tradition — enjoy a lofty and celebrated status. Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye graced one of their performances in January, causing a stir.

In the tiny landlocked nation of 12 million people, drumming troupes big and small perform at weddings, religious ceremonies and other celebrations — as well as competing against each other.

Across the globe, too, drummers in the Burundian diaspora are found on at least three continents.

“The ritual dance with the royal drum” is the jewel in the country’s intangible heritage, declares a culture ministry document.

“The prodigious leaps, the pirouettes, the winks to the spectators… all this has always marked this dance, as the bearer of an uncommon tradition, in the whole of African and world percussion.” 

– ‘Ascended the drum’ – 

The drumming tradition known locally as “ingoma” dates back to the 17th century, and honoured the eternal rule of the royal family at a time when Burundi was a monarchy.

Upon assuming the throne, a king was said to have “ascended the drum”, which was considered the source of his power.

The most hallowed drums are even given names. Many have vanished through the ages but two — known as Ruciteme and Murimirwa — are enshrined in a traditional straw hut in Gishora.

For a long time, these drums could only be carved from the gigantic trunks of “umuvugaangoma”, or “the tree that makes the drum talk”.

In 2014, UNESCO recognised the cultural value of the tradition, inscribing the ritual dance of the royal drum on its list of intangible world heritage.

Since then, the Burundian government — an authoritarian regime that emerged from an armed rebellion — has enforced strict rules around the practice.

In 2017, a long-forgotten edict banning women from playing the drums was reimposed, while dress codes for performers were mandated.

Troupes have since been required to formally register with the authorities, while those wishing to hire drummers for a private event need to apply for special permits costing $250.

In Burundi, which is the poorest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita, this is no small imposition. 

Aimable Nkunzumwami, adviser to the culture minister, said the government had a duty to ensure “respect for the cultural identity” of the drum, especially since the UNESCO listing. 

“It is the government that (must) protect the Burundian drum. That is why it has regulated the practice,” he told AFP. 

In February, a troupe of drummers caused a scandal by playing at a festival in non-regulation black suits. 

The festival was stopped, and the troupe suspended for six months. 

– ‘Took something away’ – 

In the economic capital Bujumbura, 27-year-old engineer Calixte Irantije practises twice a week after work in an open-air amphitheatre with his drumming troupe. 

“These rules have caused a reduction in demand… it has had a big impact on the market we used to have,” he said.

“Now we play at parties sanctioned by the government. We play at the weddings of those who have a permit, and official government ceremonies.”

Some Burundians, particularly those in the diaspora, have baulked at what they saw as government overreach. 

“The drum no longer belongs to the Burundian citizen. It belongs to the government,” Pacifique Nininahazwe, a civil society leader living in exile, said in 2017.  

Julien Nimubona, a professor of political science at the University of Burundi, told AFP the restrictions were less about authoritarianism and more an opportunity for officials to make money off the UNESCO status.

“It took away something that was ours,” he said. 

The coffin of slain Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba returns to his homeland on Wednesday for an emotionally charged tour and burial, more than six decades after his assassination.

A plane will take Lumumba’s last remains — a tooth that ex-colonial power Belgium handed over to his family on Monday — from Brussels to Kinshasa for a nine-day trip around the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The coffin and an accompanying delegation will then fly to the central province of Sankuru, where the country’s first post-independence leader was born in the village of Onalua in 1925.

The remains will visit sites symbolically important to Lumumba’s life and be laid to rest in a mausoleum in the capital Kinshasa on June 30, following three days of national mourning.

“His spirit, which was imprisoned in Belgium, comes back here,” said Onalua Maurice Tasombo Omatuku, a traditional chief and nephew of Lumumba.

Finally able to mourn his uncle but knowing he was assassinated in 1961, Omatuku said he was feeling emotionally torn.

– ‘The son is returning’ –

Onalua, which since 2013 has been part of a commune named Lumumbaville in honour of the anti-colonial leader, was on Tuesday preparing to welcome back its favourite son.

Braving the oppressive heat, men cleared sand, tree branches and grass from the road leading to the neighbouring town of Tshumbe under police supervision.

Palm leaves, used as a symbol of mourning or celebration, were being installed by the roadside next to Congolese flags.

A podium in the national colours of yellow, blue and red, tents and banners bearing Lumumba’s face were erected in the village square where the coffin was set to arrive.

A local resident pointed to a large, unfinished concrete house falling into dilapidation, with much of its roof missing.

“That’s the family plot where Lumumba was born,” he said.

Catherine Mbutshu said she felt joy at the idea that Lumumba’s “relic” were finally returning to the land of his forefathers.

“I’m old, my legs hurt, but I’m happy because the son is returning,” said the woman believed to have once known Lumumba.

“I spoke with him before his departure for Kisangani,” his political bastion in northeastern Congo, she said.

Lumumba earned his place in history as an anti-colonial icon when the DRC proclaimed independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960, delivering a fiery speech against settler racism.

He was overthrown that September before separatists from the southern region of Katanga and Belgian mercenaries executed him and two close supporters, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, on January 17, 1961.

– ‘Worthy burial’ –

Lumumba’s body was dissolved in acid and never recovered. 

Decades passed before human remains were discovered in Belgium, after a Belgian police officer who took part in Lumumba’s death boasted about his actions in the media. Belgian authorities seized the tooth from the officer in 2016.

In a solemn ceremony in Brussels on Monday, a casket containing the tooth was placed in a coffin that Belgium handed over to the Congolese authorities in the presence of Lumumba’s family.

“Father, we mourned your passing without performing the funeral prayer… our duty as descendants was to offer a worthy burial,” said his daughter Juliana.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo apologised again for his country’s “moral responsibility” in Lumumba’s death.

Two weeks before, Belgium’s King Philippe on his first trip to the DRC reiterated his “deepest regrets for the wounds” of Belgian colonial rule. 

Historians say millions of people were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they were forced to collect rubber under Belgian rule.

The land was also pillaged for its mineral wealth, timber and ivory.

Nigerian troops have found two former schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram jihadists eight years ago, the military said Tuesday, freeing some of the last victims of the 2014 Chibok abduction.

The two women each carried babies on their laps as they were presented by the military, after captivity with militants who stormed their school in April, 2014 in northeast Nigeria in a mass kidnapping that sparked international outrage.

Major-General Christopher Musa, the military commander of troops in the region, told reporters the girls were found on June 12 and 14 in two different locations by troops. 

“We are very lucky to have been able to recover two of the Chibok girls,” Musa said.  

Dozens of Boko Haram militants stormed the Chibok girls’ boarding school in 2014 and packed 276 pupils, aged 12-17, at the time into trucks in the jihadist group’s first mass school abduction.

Fifty-seven of the girls managed to escape by jumping from the trucks shortly after their abduction while 80 were released in exchange for some detained Boko Haram commanders following negotiations with the Nigerian government.

In the recent releases, one of the women, Hauwa Joseph, was found along with other civilians on June 12 around Bama after troops dislodged a Boko Haram camp, while the other, Mary Dauda, was found later outside Ngoshe village in Gwoza district, near the border with Cameroon. 

On June 15 the military said on Twitter that they had found one of the Chibok girls named Mary Ngoshe. She turned out to be Mary Dauda.

“I was nine when we were kidnapped from our school in Chibok and I was married off not long ago and had this child,” Joseph told reporters at the military headquarters. 

Joseph’s husband and father-in-law were killed in a military raid and she was left to fend for herself and her 14-month-old son. 

“We were abandoned, no one cared to look after us. We were not being fed,” she said. 

Thousands of Boko Haram fighters and families have been surrendering over the last year, fleeing government bombardments and infighting with the rival group Islamic State West Africa Province.

The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced 2.2 million more since 2009. 

Dauda, who was 18 when she was kidnapped was married at different times to Boko Haram fighters in the group’s enclave in the Sambisa forest. 

“They would starve and beat you if you refused to pray,” Dauda said about life under Boko Haram. 

She decided to flee and told her husband she was visiting another Chibok girl in Dutse village near Ngoshe, close to the border with Cameroon.

With the help of an old man who lived outside the village with his family, Dauda trekked all night to Ngoshe where she surrendered to troops in the morning. 

“All the remaining Chibok girls have been married with children. I left more than 20 of them in Sambisa, she said. “I’m so happy I’m back.”

After the Chibok school mass abduction jihadists carried out several mass abductions and deadly attacks on schools in the northeast.

In 2018, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) fighters kidnapped 110 schoolgirls aged 11–19 years from Government Girls Science and Technical College (GGSTC) Dapchi in neighbouring Yobe state. 

All the schoolgirls were released a month later except Leah Sharibu, the only Christian among the girls, who was held by the group for refusing to renounce her faith. 

At least five people, including four children, have died after torrential rain overnight led to flooding in Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan, the emergency services said Tuesday.

“We have been called upon since 0300 (GMT and local). Sadly five people, including four children, have been killed,” the head of the fire brigade, General Issa Sacko, told AFP.

“The children died in a landslip, and the adult was swept away by the water” in the city’s Bingerville neighbourhood.

He added that 85 people had been rescued and one taken to hospital, while a building threatening to collapse was evacuated.

Heavy rain fell through the night, flooding many neighbourhoods of Abidjan and leaving several key roads unusable.

In Bingerville, residents cleared out their homes after the water finally receded.

One inhabitant, Pricile Ziyahe, said she had lost everything in the flood.

“I have nothing left at home. The water swept it all away. We have nothing to wear or eat,” she said.

“All our documents and diplomas, everything’s gone.”

Cynthia Koffi, a medicine student, said the water rose so high it broke her home’s windows.

“At the neighbours’ opposite, you couldn’t even see the garage roof anymore,” she said.

Between Monday and midday Tuesday, some neighbourhoods in Abidjan received around 200 millimetres (eight inches) of rainfall, the equivalent of several weeks of rain, according to data from the Ivorian meteorological agency.

Residents posted images on social media showing the extent of the flooding in their homes or neighbourhoods and calling for help.

Last week, six people died after torrential rain triggered a landslip in the city’s western neighbourhood of Mossikro.

Landslips during the rainy season are a notorious risk in the fast-growing city of five million people, with flood-prone areas often inhabited by low-income citizens.

Previous accidents claimed 18 lives in June 2018 and 13 in June 2020.

The European Union on Tuesday urged Ethiopia’s government to lift restrictions on fuel supplies to the war-wracked Tigray region, warning that shortages were crippling the distribution of emergency aid.

The 19-month conflict between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and Tigrayan rebels has driven hundreds of thousands of people to the brink of famine and left more than nine million in need of food aid, according to the United Nations.

After the government announced a “humanitarian truce” in March, aid convoys have slowly made their way to Tigray for the first time since mid-December.

But fuel shortages due to government restrictions have severely limited access to life-saving supplies, even as aid warehouses are full, the EU’s commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said after a visit to Tigray’s capital Mekele.

“More fuel is needed because without it, even this food assistance that comes to Mekele cannot reach rural areas, where the needs are highest,” the EU envoy told a press conference in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

“Now we have a situation where humanitarian warehouses in Mekele are full, but people out there in the countryside are still hungry,” he added.

Tigrayans have spent several months without access to basic services such as electricity, telecommunications, internet and banking.

The situation in hospitals was especially critical, Lenarcic said, pointing to both the absence of electricity and the lack of fuel.

“You know what happens when life-saving machines do not operate because there’s no electricity and there is no fuel for generators,” he said.

“I fail to see the military rationale behind the blockade of electricity, banking services,” he said, urging the government to restore access immediately.

The conflict has driven a wedge between Ethiopia and Western nations, with the United States ending preferential trading status for its longtime ally.

The European Union announced in December 2020 that it was postponing some 90 million euros ($110 million) in aid to Ethiopia over its failure to grant full humanitarian access to Tigray.

Last week, Abiy said he was open to the possibility of peace negotiations with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

The conflict began in November 2020 when the government sent federal troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF, the region’s former ruling party, saying it was in response to rebel attacks on army camps.

After the TPLF mounted a shock comeback, retaking Tigray and then expanding into the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara, fighting intensified in the second half of 2021, before reaching a stalemate. 

Dozens of Malians demonstrated Tuesday in the central town of Bankass to demand state protection after suspected jihadists massacred at least 132 civilians, and possibly many more, in nearby neighbouring villages.

The mass killing — the latest in a series of attacks across the Sahel — resulted in one of Mali’s highest civilian death tolls.

The government says fighters from the Fulani religious leader Amadou Koufa’s armed group, the Katiba Macina, killed 132 civilians in Diallassagou and two surrounding villages, a few dozen kilometres (miles) from Bankass.

A local official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were “more than 200 dead and missing”. 

“We have never seen anything like this in Mali — the state must do something,” he told AFP. 

A police official said more bodies had been found on Tuesday.

Junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita declared three days of mourning and the government on Tuesday sent a delegation of four ministers — led by Colonel Ismael Wague, a junta strongman — to the scene, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) northeast of Bamako.

They expressed their sympathy and stopped by the hospital in Mopti where some of the injured are being treated. 

“We gave them symbolic ‘envelopes’ from the president of the transition, Colonel Goita,” said Health Minister Dieminatou Sangare, who was also part of the delegation.

The junta — which seized power in 2020 after months of protests against the civilian government’s failure to end the violence racking the country — on Monday said the safety of Mali’s citizens remained its “absolute priority”. 

But that was not enough for the people of Bankass, the capital of the area where the massacre took place.

“We want the authorities to think about us,” a woman who did not give her name told reporters after a march to demand better security. 

“I lost my two children — I have nothing to live for. Look for yourselves, we are being martyred, raped, abandoned,” she added before bursting into tears. 

A collective that says it is made up of elected officials and civil society representatives has declared “civil disobedience” until further notice. 

“Apart from health, all public services have been blocked — almost no one has gone to work,” a youth leader said.

Political leaders in Bamako expressed sympathy while rallying around the armed forces.

But a group of political parties named the “Cadre d’echange”, or Exchange Framework, and the National Human Rights Commission urged the authorities to take measures to prevent such tragedies happening again.

– ‘Absolute priority’ –

Local officials said dozens of jihadists appeared on motorcycles, then rounded up and massacred dozens of men over the weekend.

They also said the armed men burned down shops, looted villages and stole cattle. 

The bloodbath is believed to have culminated on Saturday night, with many people fleeing their homes.

Central Mali has been plagued by violence since the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Katiba Macina emerged in 2015.

Much of the area is beyond state control and is prone to violence by self-defence militias and inter-community reprisals.

On March 23, 2019, more than 160 Fulani civilians were massacred in the village of Ogossagou.

Since 2012, Mali has been rocked by an insurgency by groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group. 

Violence that began in the north has since spread to the centre and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of civilians and combatants have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced in one of the world’s poorest regions. 

Two thirds of Mali remains beyond state control.

The junta has recently turned away from Mali’s former military allies, including France, and towards the Russians.

– A ‘reprisal’ –

But Mali has seen a series of mass killings in recent months, including in the so-called three-border area on the border with Niger and Burkina Faso.

No one has claimed responsibility for the Diallassagou massacre.

Such mass killings are typically attributed to Islamic State-affiliated groups rather than Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups.

However, it is normally the Katiba Macina that operate in the Bankass area. 

Nouhoum Togo, a local elected official in Bankass, told AFP the attack was a reprisal against locals after the Malian army on June 10 carried out an operation there, in which it said it had “neutralised” six jihadists.