Central African President Leads Provisional Results in Controversial Election
Provisional results released by the electoral council in the Central African Republic suggest President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has been elected for a third term with 76% of the vote. The results have been disputed by the second-placed candidate Anicet-Georges Dologuélé, who says he won. It has been a controversial election, with the main opposition party boycotting it and the two defeated candidates have complained about not being able to travel to some regions to canvas. France 24
Sudan: Nearly 65,000 Flee Kordofan amid Escalating Insecurity
The United Nations on Monday said that nearly 65,000 civilians have fled the Kordofan region in southern Sudan over the past three months due to escalating insecurity. In a statement, the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said that 56 displacement incidents occurred between 25 October and 30 December 2025, including 17 in North Kordofan, 38 in South Kordofan, and one in West Kordofan, affecting around 64,890 people. More than 42,000 people fled North Kordofan, about 21,860 were displaced from South Kordofan, and 250 from the Geibaish area in West Kordofan, the statement said. The IOM said the figures are preliminary and subject to change due to ongoing insecurity. Nearly 13 million people have been displaced since Sudan’s civil war broke out in April 2023 when tensions between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) broke into conflict. Middle East Eye
Virtual Museum Preserves Sudan’s Plundered Heritage
Destroyed and looted in the early months of Sudan’s war, the national museum in Khartoum is now welcoming virtual visitors after months of painstaking effort to digitally recreate its collection. …”The virtual museum is the only viable option to ensure continuity,” government antiquities official Ikhlass Abdel Latif said, during a recent presentation of the project carried out by the French Archaeological Unit for Sudanese Antiquities (SFDAS) with support from the Louvre and Britain’s Durham University. … [SFDAS researcher Faiza Drici] worked for more than a year to reconstruct the lost holdings in a database, working from fragments of official lists, studies published by researchers and photos taken during excavation missions. Then graphic designer Marcel Perrin created a computer model that mimicked the museum’s atmosphere — its architecture, its lighting and the arrangement of its displays. Online since January 1, the virtual museum now gives visitors a facsimile of the experience of walking through the institution’s galleries — reconstructed from photographs and the original plans — and viewing more than 1,000 pieces inherited from the ancient Kingdom of Kush. … In addition to the virtual museum’s documentary value, the catalogue reconstructed by SFDAS is expected to bolster Interpol’s efforts to thwart the trafficking of Sudan’s stolen heritage. AFP
Egypt Says Shares ‘Identical’ Positions with Saudi Arabia on Yemen, Sudan
Egypt said on Monday it is aligned with Saudi Arabia on the conflicts in Yemen and Sudan, as well as the question of breakaway region Somaliland, at a time of heightened regional instability and growing rivalry with Abu Dhabi. During talks in Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan stressed their countries’ “identical” positions on “reaching peaceful solutions to the region’s crises”, an Egyptian presidency statement said. … The meeting comes against a backdrop of widening differences between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, once close partners in regional politics. … Sudan is another point of friction, where Egypt and Saudi Arabia back the country’s de-facto leader while the UAE has been accused of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Competition has also extended to the Horn of Africa, a strategically vital region along key global shipping routes. Saudi Arabia has sought to bolster ties with Somalia’s federal government, while the UAE has cultivated close relations with Ethiopia and Somaliland, a self-declared republic that broke away from Somalia in 1991. AFP
Angola Floats ‘Proposals’ to End DR Congo Fighting
Angola said Monday it had floated to President Felix Tshisekedi proposals to end the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and that the Congolese leader had found them “interesting”. … Tshisekedi met his counterpart Joao Lourenco in Angola’s capital Luanda, the Angolan presidency said in a statement after the visit, which lasted “a few hours”. “The Congolese statesman said that President Joao Lourenco put forward “some proposals” which he found “very interesting” and which, in terms of the search for peace in his country, could “contribute significantly”,” the statement said. It was not immediately clear what measures had been presented. Previous Angolan attempts to broker a truce failed to resolve the crisis. The meeting between Tshisekedi and Lourenco — the current chair of the African Union — comes days before a gathering on Thursday of African Great Lakes region defence ministers to address the increasingly parlous security situation in the DRC. AFP
Move over, UAE: Qatar Carves a Different Path into Africa
Doha is keen not to be left behind in the Middle East’s pivot to Africa, but it knows it cannot compete with Riyadh on scale or Abu Dhabi on maritime dominance. Instead, it has adopted an ‘agile power’ strategy, focusing on node-power: owning, financing or influencing the junctions that connect trade, data, diplomacy and capital. … The centrepiece is a structural alliance with Rwanda. Qatar Airways has taken a majority stake in the new Bugesera International Airport and is eyeing a deepening role in RwandAir. … On the ground, the approach is more subtle. QatarEnergy has adopted a ‘silent partner’ model. … It is a calculated wager: let the operators handle the drill-bit risk and political noise, while Qatar provides the capital and secures the LNG optionality. Yet commerce is merely the engine for Qatar’s preferred export: diplomatic indispensability. Doha markets mediation as a service, leveraging its neutrality to broker talks in the Great Lakes crisis between the DRC and Rwanda, and hosting peace dialogues for Chad. The Africa Report
Botswana to Open Embassy in Moscow, Open up to Russia in Rare Earths and Diamonds, Minister Says
Botswana plans to open an embassy in Moscow soon and has invited Russian investors to cooperate on rare earths and diamonds, Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted Botswana’s foreign minister as saying on Sunday. Russia is seeking to strengthen its foothold in Africa amid the wider confrontation with the West. “We firmly believe that Botswana is the best place for investment, considering its political and economic stability. Therefore, we strongly encourage Russian investors to come to Botswana,” Botswana’s Phenyo Butale was quoted as saying by TASS. Diamonds normally contribute around one-third of Botswana’s national revenues and three-quarters of its foreign exchange receipts. Russia’s Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel, settled its dispute with the government of Botswana and BCL Group in 2021 about a transaction for the sale of Nornickel’s assets in Africa to BCL Group. Reuters
Zanzibar to Host Regional Summit as Eastern Africa Heightens War on Illegal Fishing
Zanzibar is set to host a major regional summit later this month that will bring together delegations from Kenya, Mauritius, Tanzania and Zanzibar to step up the fight against illegal fishing in the South West Indian Ocean. The Blue Voices Regional Summit 2026, scheduled for January 26–28, will focus on strengthening coordination among coastal states to curb the growing threat of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing — a problem that continues to drain billions from Africa’s blue economy and undermine the livelihoods of coastal communities. … Experts say that while individual governments have strengthened monitoring and licensing systems, illegal operators take advantage of weak coordination between neighbouring states. …The upcoming Zanzibar summit aims to shift the focus from isolated enforcement to regional solidarity. Delegates are expected to deliberate on joint action plans, shared intelligence, and standardised enforcement measures that will allow real-time communication among fisheries agencies. The Standard
Nigeria: Coalition Calls for Renewed Commitment to Electoral Reform
The Youth Electoral Reform Project (YERP-Naija) coalition called for renewed legislative commitment to electoral reforms ahead of the 2027 general elections. Bukola Idowu, Executive Director of Kimpact Development Initiative (KDI) and National Coordinator of the YERP-Naija, in a press statement released on 1 January, said that as of 26 December 2025, the progress on electoral reform has remained uneven across the two chambers of the National Assembly. While the House of Representatives has concluded the consideration and voting on the proposed amendments to the Electoral Act, the Senate has yet to commence voting before embarking on recess, YERP-Naija said. … The House of Representatives has made significant progress towards the Electoral Act amendment. In July 2025, the chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on the INEC, Adebayo Balogun, told PREMIUM TIMES that the electoral reforms in the National Assembly were targeted at expanding inclusion, strengthening internal democracy, and enhancing public confidence. Premium Times
Trial of 45 People Charged in Connection with Kafolo Terrorist Attack Resumes in Cote d’Ivoire
The trial of 45 people charged in connection with a 2020 attack on a military checkpoint resumed in Cote d’Ivoire’s Anti-Terrorism Court on Monday. The defendants are accused of participating in or assisting the attack that killed 14 soldiers at Kafolo, on the border with Burkina Faso. They include the alleged leader of the unit that carried out that assault and the father of an alleged perpetrator who is accused of helping his son flee. Authorities are hoping the trial will help them better understand the activities and recruitment networks of jihadist groups in the region. The Kafolo attack came weeks after Ivorian and Burkinabe security forces destroyed a jihadist base in Alidougou, Burkina Faso. Africanews
Tunisia Court Frees NGO Workers Accused of Helping Migrants
A Tunisian court has freed a group of humanitarian workers after handing them suspended sentences for facilitating the “illegal entry and residence” of migrants, a support committee said on Tuesday. Sherifa Riahi, the former director of the French NGO Terre d’Asile, and several members of her staff had already spent more than 20 months in jail by the time of their final hearing on Monday. … The NGO employees were accused alongside 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse who were implicated for having lent premises to the organisation. The 23 defendants, who were also charged with “conspiracy with the aim of housing or hiding people who entered clandestinely”, had faced up to 10 years in prison. Other charges, including ones alleging financial misdeeds, were previously dropped. The defendants’ lawyers had argued they were simply carrying out humanitarian work under a state-approved programme, in coordination with the government. RFI
At Least 31 Dead in New Year’s Migrant Boat Sinking off Gambia
At least 31 people drowned when an overloaded boat carrying undocumented migrants capsized on New Year’s Eve off the coast of Gambia, the government said on Monday, hiking the previous toll. “Many others (are) missing and feared dead,” the government said in an update. Thousands of people, most of them young, have tried to reach Europe from west Africa, mainly via the Spanish Canary Islands, on overcrowded and often dilapidated boats due to restrictions on visas and tighter border security. Migrant boats have been forced to leave from further south, notably from The Gambia and Guinea, adding to the journey — and dangers — at sea, after Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco increased maritime patrols. In the latest such tragedy, a boat loaded with more than 200 people made a distress call overnight December 31 to January 1 near the North Bank region. AFP