The EU Will Pay Dearly for Its Neglect of North Africa

In the fall of 2012, as Syria plunged into civil war and the Eurozone crisis generated panic across global markets, a parliamentary election in Ukraine signaled trouble ahead to those who were paying attention. The results that trickled out on Oct. 28, 2012, indicated that then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions had secured a strong position through dubious constitutional maneuvers and ballot manipulation.

AQIM’s Imperial Playbook: Understanding al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb’s Expansion into West Africa

In 2021, the United Nations noted the newfound threats of the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a branch of al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), that extended into Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, stretching farther yet into Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Had an observer in 2006 had this information presented to them, they might have scarcely believed it. That year, in which AQIM was formed, the group was a thoroughly North African organization and based primarily in Algeria. Fast forward 15 years, how did AQIM end up nearly 1,300 miles away, now posing immediate threats in the states of littoral West Africa?

Méditerranée : selon l’ONU, en 2021, plus de 3000 migrants ont perdu la vie en mer, le double de 2020

Plus de 3000 migrants sont morts l’an dernier en mer alors qu’ils tentaient de rejoindre l’Europe, soit le double du bilan enregistré en 2020, a indiqué l’ONU vendredi.

“Sur ce total, 1924 personnes ont été déclarées mortes ou disparues sur les routes de la Méditerranée centrale et occidentale, tandis que 1153 autres ont péri ou ont été portées disparues sur la route maritime de l’Afrique du Nord-Ouest vers les îles Canaries”, a déclaré une porte-parole de l’agence de l’ONU pour les réfugiés à Genève, Shabia Mantoo.

Plus de 4000 réfugiés nigérians de retour dans le bastion des jihadistes

Plus de 4.000 Nigérians ayant fui les exactions jihadistes dans le nord-est du Nigeria vers le Niger voisin sont rentrés chez eux malgré l’insécurité et des services quasi-inexistants dans la région.

Les travailleurs humanitaires craignent que le retour fin mars des réfugiés à Malam Fatori, dans l’Etat du Borno, épicentre d’une insurrection jihadiste vieille de plus de 10 ans, cause davantage de victimes et de déplacés.

Nigeria: TotalEnergies to Sell Stake in Nigerian Joint Venture

TotalEnergies is the latest multinational to give up its onshore asset for deep-water fields.

French oil major TotalEnergies has announced it will put up for sale its minority stake in a Nigerian oil joint venture.

The firm wants to focus on deep-water fields away from the difficulties of operating in close proximity with local communities, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Libya is a ‘Market of Human Beings’

Many African migrants and refugees see crossing the Mediterranean Sea as the only chance for a better life. Sally Hayden tells their harrowing stories in My Fourth Time, We Drowned.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, the European Union and the rest of the world is witnessing the biggest influx of refugees into Europe since World War II.

Rebels Without a Cause

The New Face of African Warfare

On August 1, 2018, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared an outbreak of Ebola in the country’s war-torn northeast. It was Congo’s tenth recorded outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever, but the first in an active conflict zone. Determined to avoid a repeat of the West African Ebola epidemic in 2014, when outside help was too little, too late, donors threw caution to the wind and pumped more than $700 million into northeastern Congo to fight the disease over the next 20 months. To protect their staff members, the World Health Organization and its partners put both Congolese security forces and local militia members on their payrolls. This created perverse incentives: although the combatants had reason to refrain from attacking aid workers, they also had an interest in prolonging the epidemic so they could keep profiting from it. Between August 2018 and June 2020, when the Ebola epidemic was finally declared over, some militiamen and members of the government security forces stoked violence and instability so that the disease would continue to spread and the international aid agencies would continue to pay them. A well-meaning effort to contain the disease ended up doing the exact opposite.

Pour s’affranchir de la Russie, l’Europe mise sur le gaz africain

Depuis l’invasion de l’Ukraine le 24 février, les pays européens ont décidé de diversifier leurs sources d’approvisionnement en gaz en misant sur l’Afrique.

L’Afrique fournit en ce moment, 10% du gaz européen. Un chiffre qui devrait augmenter dans les trois prochaines années. L’Italie par exemple, très dépendante du gaz russe, multiplie les contacts en vue d’importer plus d’hydrocarbures africains.