Ethiopia and Somalia Vow to Strengthen Ties
The diplomatic dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia that had led to tense regional relations has been resolved, Somalia’s foreign minister says. Ahmed Moalim Fiqi’s statement, carried by state TV, said Somalia had made no concessions. Ethiopia has not commented on the Somali claim, but said the two countries had agreed to “strengthen bilateral relations.” The two neighbours had been at loggerheads since last January when landlocked Ethiopia signed a maritime deal with the breakaway Somaliland, which Somalia considers as part of its territory. Friday’s statement follows a visit to Somalia by an Ethiopian delegation in the latest sign of détente after a Turkey-brokered deal announced last month. Led by Ethiopian Defence Minister Aisha Mohammed, the visit focused on the future of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Ethiopia has thousands of troops stationed in Somalia which are not part of the AU force and it has not been clear what role they will play in the future. In its statement, Ethiopia said the two countries had agreed to collaborate on the mission. BBC
Eastern DRC: Peace Talks Have Collapsed Yet Again, as Rebel Groups Continue to Make Mayhem
Intense negotiations in the past six months to end decades of chaos and bloodshed in eastern Congo collapsed in mid-December, when at the last minute Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, refused to endorse a new deal. He had been expected to shake hands on it with Congo’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, in Luanda, capital of Angola, whose president, João Lourenço, has been entrusted by the African Union (AU) with the task of mediation. The upshot is that a Rwandan-supported rebel group known as M23, as well as an array of lesser guerrilla outfits, will continue to immiserate eastern Congo’s people. At least a million of them in the North Kivu district have fled since a resurgence of fighting in recent years. Economist
Ghana: Fire Guts Kantamanto Market, Heart of Africa’s Used Clothing Trade
A raging inferno that swept through the bustling Kantamanto Market in the Ghanaian capital Accra has reduced the sprawling hub of the country’s informal economy to ashes, officials said. The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) deployed 13 fire tenders to put out the flames. But on the morning of Thursday, January 2, ruins smoldered where rows of stalls once bustled with activities. Goods worth millions of the local cedi currency have been destroyed, the GNFS said. “This is devastating,” said Alex King Nartey, a GNFS spokesperson. “We’ve not recorded severe casualties, but the economic loss is enormous.” “Preliminary investigations suggest faulty electrical connections might have sparked the blaze, although we are not ruling out arson,” Nartey said, adding that efforts to completely extinguish the fire could stretch into Friday. Le Monde
Ghana’s Parliament Passes Provisional Budget, Averts Government Shutdown
Ghana’s parliament has passed a provisional budget that allows the government to spend 68.1 billion Ghanaian cedis ($4.65 billion) through March, the chamber’s speaker said, narrowly averting an unprecedented government shutdown. Parliamentary Speaker Alban Bagbin said the parliament had approved the provisional budget in a sitting that stretched deep into Thursday night. John Dramani Mahama is set to take office as the West African country’s president next week after winning a Dec. 7 election, staging a political comeback after serving as Ghana’s president from 2012 to 2016. Outgoing President Nana Akufo-Addo was due to present his last state of the nation address later on Friday after eight years leading the gold- and oil-exporting nation. A provisional budget is typically passed in November during election years to cover the gap until the president-elect takes office. But the presentation of the provisional budget had dragged this time after an impasse over whether the outgoing New Patriotic Party (NPP) or the incoming National Democratic Congress (NDC) party has a majority of seats in the House. Reuters
Mali’s Ruling Military Junta This Week Accuses Its Neighbour Algeria of “Interference”
As Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger prepare to withdraw from the West African bloc Ecowas, reports show an increase in instability in the region – partly due to a lack of coordination in the fight against jihadism – with Mali now accusing Algeria of supporting Tuareg rebel groups. … The Malian junta announced on 25 January, 2024 the “immediate termination” of the Algiers Peace Agreement signed in 2015, long regarded as crucial for stabilising the country – especially in the northern region populated and controlled by Tuareg groups, known to them as Azawad. The agreement had been seen as moribund since 2023, when the predominantly Tuareg separatist groups reopened hostilities in the north against the central government and the Malian army. This resurgence of conflict also coincided with the withdrawal of the United Nations stabilisation mission in Mali (Minusma), which was pushed out by the junta after a decade of operations. The decision to abandon the 2015 Algiers Peace agreement was part of a series of ruptures initiated by the military rulers who seized power in Bamako in 2020. RFI
Record Number of Migrants, Refugees Reached Canary Islands by Sea in 2024
At least 46,843 people reached Spain’s Canary Islands in 2024 through the increasingly deadly Atlantic migration route, the country’s interior ministry has said. The European country received 63,970 migrants who arrived through irregular routes last year, the vast majority in the Atlantic archipelago, up from 56,852 in 2023, the ministry said on Thursday. EU border agency Frontex noted that irregular crossings into the bloc from January to November 2024 fell 40 percent overall but grew 19 percent on the Atlantic route, with people from Mali, Senegal and Morocco attempting to cross. … Last week, at least 69 people, including 25 Malians, died after a boat heading from West Africa to the Canary Islands capsized off Morocco. Al Jazeera
Mauritius Police Issue Arrest Order for Former Central Bank Governor
Police in Mauritius have issued an order for the arrest of the Indian Ocean islands’ former central bank governor, in connection to an inquiry into a conspiracy to defraud case. The action, by the police anti-money laundering unit, is the first significant one from the government of Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, who said last week the outgoing government had falsified the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), budget deficit and public debt figures for years. The former central bank governor, Harvesh Kumar Seegolam, was out of the country and would be arrested as soon as he returned, police said in a notice in Mauritius newspapers on Sunday. … In a report issued to parliament, Ramgoolam also accused the central bank of printing money to fund the government’s Mauritius Investment Corporation, set up in 2020 to help companies deal with effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reuters
Chinese Firm To Build Guinea’s Biggest Alumina Processing Plant
China’s State Power Investment Corp. will start the construction of its alumina processing plant in Guinea this year after producing bauxite in the West African country for the past three years. SPIC will start the construction in March and complete the refinery that will have the capacity to produce 1.2 million tons of alumina per year by the end of 2027, the presidency said in a statement. The plant is set to become the country’s biggest and the only other one after Russian owned United Co. Rusal Friguia’s refinery, which has the capacity to produce at least 600,000 tons a year. Bloomberg
Zimbabwe to Work With Russia, IAEA to Establish Nuclear Energy
The nation has expressed its interest in nuclear power to the IAEA, said Edgar Moyo, minister of energy and power development, and hopes to develop small, modular reactors. Establishing nuclear power is expensive and complex, said Joseph Siegle, the director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington, which is the reason countries such as South Africa and Egypt have sought Russia’s assistance. The process is also ripe for corruption, he said, so transparency is critical. “Most economists would argue that those deals cost far more than are warranted for the benefits that they would provide to their economies and to their societies,” Siegle said, “and so there’s a worry that these huge infrastructure projects become a source of corruption, both in the country where it is being built, but also vis-a-vis the state-owned enterprises that the Russians provide to build the plant. “In the end, it becomes the public in the country that is building the plant that would be responsible for paying off these costs,” he said. VOA
A Half-Ton Piece of Space Junk Falls Onto a Village in Kenya
A glowing ring of metal, more than eight feet in diameter and weighing more than 1,100 pounds, fell from the sky and crash landed in a remote village in Kenya this week, causing no injuries but frightening residents who feared a bomb or worse. … Major Aloyce Were of the Kenya Space Agency said that authorities were still assessing the extent of the damage to the area, its residents and their livestock. Hours after the object landed, Maj. Were and his team went to the scene, where they met traumatized residents. “Space is no longer as safe as we used to know it,” he said. … “Our concern is that because the uptake of countermeasures is slow at the moment, the problem grows faster,” [Mr. Stijn Lemmens, a senior space debris mitigation analyst for the European Space Agency] said. New York Times
African YouTubers and Tiktokers Search for Ways to Make It Pay
… “Most of the media online was negative, and I saw that I was changing the narrative about Africa by showcasing it in a more [representative] light,” says [Nigerian content creator Tayo] Aina, who now travels the world. A 2024 report on Africa’s creator industry by the publishing firm Communiqué and the media and technology company TM Global, valued the sector at £2.4bn and predicted that it would grow five-fold by 2030, mirroring trends in the global creator economy. Its growth is being driven by a wave of creators aged 18 to 34, and spurred on by surging internet connectivity and social media use across the continent, as well as the explosion of African culture on the world stage. … [Chiamaka “Amaka” Amaku, a 30-year-old Nigerian travel and lifestyle innovator], who charges £250-£500 for posts on her Instagram page, which has about 20,000 followers, says it is difficult to make a living from content creation, and that the “hush-hush culture” around industry rates in Nigeria leaves many creators short-changed. Guardian