Africa

Long viewed as North Africa’s most isolated and inscrutable country, Algeria is suddenly the belle of the ball. This year, Algeria has hosted official visits from Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, and the United States (the first visit by a US secretary of state since 2014). Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman will travel to Algiers next month. Meanwhile, Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has visited Egypt, Italy, Kuwait, Qatar, and Turkey and is expected in Moscow later this year.

A power struggle between eastern and western-based rival governments has brought Libya to the brink of renewed civil war.

U.N. mediators have failed, thus far, to persuade contending factions to agree to a process for national elections.

Members of the Russian private military company Wagner Group have been implicated in numerous criminal activities throughout both North and sub-Saharan Africa.

While some believe Wagner activity in CAR is designed to offset sanctions on Moscow by accessing precious metals, others see the typical rapaciousness that comes with mercenary activity in fragile states.

After two days of U.N.-mediated talks in Geneva, two senior Libyan officials from the country’s rival camps failed to reach an agreement on a constitutional framework for national elections, the United Nations envoy to Libya said Thursday.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari traveled to Pretoria in early October to meet his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, just weeks after the latest outbreak of attacks against foreigners—including Nigerians—in South Africa in September.

The only true path to energy security, stable power prices, prosperity and a livable planet lies in abandoning polluting fossil fuels and accelerating the renewables-based energy transition

Nero was famously accused of fiddling while Rome burned. Today, some leaders are doing worse. They are throwing fuel on the fire. Literally.

The African Union Commission chief has voiced his shock at the “violent and degrading” treatment of African migrants trying to cross from Morocco into Spanish territory after 23 people died, and has called for an investigation into the incident.

On Saturday, West Darfur witnessed the signing of agreements to stop hostilities between Arab and Masalit tribes in El Geneina locality, and the Rizeigat and Iringa tribes in Sirba locality, in the presence of Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti’, Deputy Chairman of the Sovereignty Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Rapid Support Forces. The Darfur Bar Association has dismissed the conference as “mere political demonstrations that encourage impunity in the absence of the Rule of Law”.

In June 2018, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali told Parliament that the post-1991 government used torture and killing to terrorise its people. Perpetrated in police detention centres, dungeons and prisons across the country, the state-sanctioned violence recounted by the prime minister amounts to crimes against humanity in international criminal law. That is, a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population.

The Darfur Bar Association (DBA) has confirmed the presence of Russian ‘Wagner’* mercenaries in South Darfur, which it claims to have documented ‘since last year’. The mercenaries are specifically accused of attacks on artisanal gold miners in Um Dafug locality, close to the border with the Central African Republic (CAR).