Israel-Gaza war: Why is Africa divided on supporting Palestine?

As reports of Hamas fighters attacking southern Israel last Saturday flooded phones and television sets around the world, Kenyan President William Ruto took to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Kenya joins the rest of the world in solidarity with the State of Israel and unequivocally condemns terrorism and attacks on innocent civilians in the country,” he wrote. “There exists no justification whatsoever for terrorism, which constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security.”

What we are witnessing in Africa is not an anti-colonial revolution

On August 17, Arikana Chihombori-Quao, former permanent representative of the African Union to the United States, claimed the recent military coups in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea were part of the early stages of an “African revolution” against Western neocolonialism.

“What is going on now in Africa is a revolution similar to what we saw with the demise of the mighty Roman Empire, similar to what we saw with the fall of the mighty British Empire,” Chihombori-Quao said in an interview with New York-based Nigerian news channel Arise TV.

Charismatic leader is gone but Wagner will survive in Africa, analysts say

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, just left Mali where he filmed a video pledging to make “Africa even more free” before he perished in a plane crash in his home country.

His death has sparked concerns for some client governments in Africa who rely on his unique services.

Patronage of Prigozhin’s private military force has been on the rise in recent years since some African governments started turning towards Russia as an alternative international partner in their fight against rising insecurity from various armed groups.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central Africa Republic (CAR) was the first to turn to the feared militia in 2018, but the shifting sands of democratic governments that have seen a rise in military takeovers in the Sahel region opened the door widely for Wagner.

Wagner making ‘Africa even more free’, says Prigozhin in first post-rebellion video

The Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has posted his first video address since leading a short-lived rebellion in Russia, appearing in a clip – possibly shot in Africa – on Telegram channels affiliated with the Wagner group.

A person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader is seen in the video standing in a desert area in camouflage and with a rifle in his hands. In the distance, there are more armed men and a pickup truck.

The warlord suggests in the clip, posted on Monday, that he is on the African continent, adding that “the temperature is plus 50 [degrees Celsius]”. He says Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search operations and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”.

The Guardian was not able to geolocate or verify the date of the video. All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group, reported on Saturday that a plane linked to Prighozin had landed in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

Russian social media channels close to the mercenary leader said Prigozhin was recruiting fighters to work in Africa and also inviting investors from Russia to put money into CAR through Russian House, a cultural centre linked to Prigozhin operating in Bamako.

In the video, Prigozhin says Wagner is recruiting people and the group “will fulfil the tasks that were set”.

Prigozhin moved into the global spotlight in June with a dramatic, short-lived mutiny that posed the most serious threat to Vladimir Putin in the president’s 23-year rule. He was last heard from at the end of July, when a social media account linked to him posted a recording in which he said that Wagner would pause recruiting new fighters and would focus on activities in Africa and in Russia’s neighbour, Belarus.

Over the past few years, Wagner has deployed several thousand troops in at least five African countries, propping up local autocratic regimes, often at a grave cost to the local population. Wagner has been accused of involvement in massacres in Mali as well as elsewhere in the Sahel and central Africa.

The group is believed to have the largest presence in Central African Republic (CAR), where it intervened in 2018 on the side of the government to quell a civil war that has raged since 2012. Wagner also deployed about 1,000 personnel to Mali in December 2021 after a military coup.

Shortly after Prigozhin’s revolt, Moscow reassured its allies in Africa that thousands of Wagner group fighters deployed to the continent would not be withdrawn.

The future of Wagner has, however, been unclear since Prigozhin led his short mutiny against the Russian defence establishment.

Under a deal brokered by the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to end his rebellion in exchange for amnesty for him and his fighters and permission to relocate to Belarus. Before moving to Belarus, Wagner handed over its weapons to the Russian military, part of efforts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat posed by the mercenaries.

Putin called Prigozhin a traitor as the revolt unfolded and vowed harsh punishment, but the criminal case against the mercenary chief on rebellion charges was later dropped. Unusually, the Kremlin said Putin had a three-hour meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner group commanders days after the rebellion. Putin said he sought and failed during the meeting to have Prigozhin replaced as the leader of Wagner’s fighters in Ukraine.

A video in July apparently showed Prigozhin in Belarus but he was photographed after that on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of St Petersburg.

The Wagner founder long benefited from Putin’s powerful patronage, including while he built a private army that fought for Russian interests abroad and participated in some of the deadliest battles of the war in Ukraine.

Original Article
Source: theguardian
Author: Pjotr Sauer

Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to exert influence in Africa

Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal.

The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the former colonial powers the UK and France out of the region. Another is to see off “pro-western” uprisings, the documents say.

The Western media is ignoring a powerful uprising where citizens are resisting tyranny and Russian interference

The story of the world today is the rise of right-wing populism, or so we are told. It’s the story of Donald Trump, of Brexit, of rising nationalism in continental Europe — especially in the east — as well as almost all of the former Soviet Union. But stories can change quickly. Whatever happened to "The End of History"? Or the War on Terror? The Great Recession? Or the Arab Spring? Who knows what the story will be next? Perhaps it’s already being written in Sudan, with echoes of so many other stories folded into it.

China’s educational offensive in African markets

As the United States looks to strengthen its commercial competitive stance vis a vis China in African markets, policy makers should look to one area of competition that has been absent from the debate —higher education. While the United States is home to most of the world’s best universities and a historical legacy of educating African political and business elite, Beijing has actively wooed the next generation of African leaders by broadening educational opportunities in China.

Here’s How China Is Changing Africa’s Future

JOHANNESBURG ― The contrast couldn’t be starker. As U.S. President Donald Trump’s government continues to champion isolationism and undermine decades-old international relationships, China is rolling out its Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, a project to build a new “Silk Road” that could change the meaning of globalization itself. Africa is at the margins of both of these developments, but its future will be determined by them.

As someone who grew up in Africa, the project stirs a tangle of emotions. While it will directly affect East and North Africa, there is the chance that it could spur desperately needed development all along Africa’s eastern seaboard, where countries are still trying to recover from the proxy conflicts of the Cold War.

Removing monuments to Canadians who helped conquer Africa

Some good might come in Canada from neo-fascists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Taking advantage of media interest in protests over monuments to historical figures with racist views activists in Halifax are pushing to remove commemorations to two individuals who helped conquer Africa. And there's no lack of other such memorials to target across the Great White North.

Tomato-Paste Colonialism

A hundred workers were picking tomatoes in a field near Wusu, a town in northern Xinjiang Province, China, half way between the provincial capital, Ürümqi, and the border with Kazakhstan. Most were migrants from Sichuan Province, with a few Uyghurs. A teenage girl raised her cleaver above her head and cut off a leafy stem laden with ripe fruit. Another worker picked up the stem and shook it, and the tomatoes fell to the ground with a thud; gradually, the field was covered with red and green stripes. Men and women crouched down to fill big plasticized canvas sacks. They were earning 2.2 renminbi for each 25-kilogram sack, just over 1 US cent per kilo. “Me and my wife can sometimes fill 170 sacks in a day,” said one worker. That comes out at around $28 each, 10 times more than they earned in the early 2000s. But now they compete with machines imported from Italy.

The Hypocrisy Of Canadian Ownership In Africa

What is wrong here? While Canadian companies exploit African resources for their own benefit this country's charities call on us to join Africa "hope" walks.

Last week Toronto-based Lundin Mining hired the Bank of Montreal to help it decide what to do with its stake in the massive Tenke Fungurume copper-cobalt mine in Eastern Congo (Kinshasa).

Forgotten African refugees: Canadian nation-building through exclusion

In recent months, Canada has been inundated with press coverage and debate over the Syrian refugee crisis. The crisis and subsequent arrival of 25,000 refugees to Canada has been meticulously documented, including sentimental photo-ops with politicians, to a horrific pepper-spraying hate crime in Vancouver.

But Daniel Tseghay, an Eritrean writer and organizer in Vancouver, says the crisis has put "a focus on some groups of people at the expense of others." In fact, Tseghay starts his day off with an Internet news search with the key-term "refugee" and every hit is related to Syrian refugees.

Hunting Boko Haram

GAROUA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, proclaimed the sign on the concrete and glass terminal building. The designation was something of a misnomer, because only three or four planes land each week in this sleepy outpost in northern Cameroon, near the Nigerian border, all of them domestic flights. The schedule of the flights tends to be unpredictable. The aging jet that had just flown me to Garoua from Douala, for example, had made an unscheduled stop in N’Djamena, the capital of neighboring Chad, so that a government minister could attend a funeral nearby. As a result, the plane had touched down in Garoua five hours late.

Corporate Canada And Africa's Last Colony

In violation of international law two major Canadian companies are buying the non-renewable resources of Africa's last remaining colony.

Saskatoon's PotashCorp and Calgary's Agrium have partnered with Morocco's state owned OCP to export phosphate mined in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated territory in northwestern Africa that was ruled by Spain until 1975. When the Spanish departed Moroccan troops moved in and a bloody 15 year war drove tens of thousands of Sahrawi into neighboring Algeria, where they still live in camps.

Allegations of conscripted labour in Canadian mine: the fifth estate

A Vancouver-based mining company that struck gold in the small North African country of Eritrea is being accused in a B.C. lawsuit of permitting forced labour to be used in the construction of its mine.

The allegations filed by three former Eritrean conscripts in B.C.'s Supreme Court accuse Nevsun Resources of being "an accomplice to the use of forced labour, crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses at the Bisha mine."

China and Africa: Are the Good Times Over?

One of the prevailing media narratives of China's recent economic turmoil is the effect that it could have on emerging markets, particularly in Africa. Now that the Chinese economy is showing real signs of slowing, the story goes, Beijing will soon pull back on the billions of dollars in investments and purchases that it makes from commodity-exporting African markets.

Hands off Africa: Canada's 300 years of intrusions exposed

The strength of a myth is probably clearest in its capacity to seduce its victims as much as its beneficiaries. While white Canadians have an ego-massaging reason for believing that this country is faultless, a moral beacon, and a peacekeeping global citizen, the fact that some immigrants are equally misled is a testament to the myth's endurance.

I immigrated to Canada from Eritrea, a north-eastern African country, at the age of three. Since then, I've heard the myth of Canada's relationship with Africa -- from settlers and immigrants alike. It's embedded in the talking points of this country's state representatives, in our media's echoing of government press releases, and in casual conversations about good Canadians helping those poor Africans.

Canadian Miner Nevsun Defends Operations In Eritrea As Locals Flee To Europe

CALGARY — Canadian mining company Nevsun Resources is defending its operations in Eritrea following a damning report by the United Nations that accused the miner of using forced labour in the North African country.

Nevsun released an updated independent human rights report this week that found no evidence of forced labour or human rights violations at its 60-per-cent-owned Bisha mine in Eritrea, where thousands of people are fleeing on perilous treks to Europe.

Backed by Conservative government, Canadian mining companies are plundering Africa

Canadian policy in Africa can be summed up in nine words: Do what is good for Canadian-owned mining companies.

Despite rhetoric about aid to the poorest people in the world, the Harper Conservatives have worked assiduously to ensure that Canadian corporations profit from Africa's vast mineral resources.

Even widespread criticism of their operations has failed to dampen the Conservatives' support for Canada's many mining interests in Africa. Canadian mining companies have been accused of bribing officials, evading taxes, dispossessing farmers, displacing communities, employing forced labour, devastating ecosystems and spurring human rights violations.

Ethiopians talk of violent intimidation as their land is earmarked for foreign investors

The human cost of Ethiopia’s “villagisation” programme is laid bare by damning first person testimony published on Tuesday.

The east African country has long faced criticism for forcibly relocating tens of thousands of people from their ancestral homes to make way for large scale commercial agriculture, often benefiting foreign investors. Those moved to purpose-built communes are allegedly no longer able to farm or access education, healthcare and other basic services.