Africa News and Discussions

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Angry Egyptians Denounce Staged Pro-Palestine Rallies Amid Israel-Hamas War
October 21, 2023

Introduction:

(Al Jazeera) Cairo, Egypt – On a sunny Friday in Cairo, buses waving both the Palestinian and the Egyptian flags arrive at El-Nasr road in the district of Nasr City.

The Friday prayer has ended and, with it, the only moment of silence that the Egyptian capital ever regularly witnesses.

Protest chants are about to fill the air, as the bus doors swing open and a crowd of mostly young men hit the pavement, holding aloft the flags and portraits of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Critics say el-Sisi’s administration has been organising staged protests like this one to rally support for his embattled government, by piggybacking on public sympathy for Palestinians as the death toll from Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip ticks higher.

The bus itself is emblazoned with the logo of el-Sisi’s The Nation’s Future party. Event organisers, believed to be undercover police officers, start to direct the protest participants, telling them where to go and what to chant.

Read more here: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/202 ... -protests

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More than 800 Sudanese reportedly killed in an attack on a Darfur town, the UN says

"CAIRO — Fighters from a paramilitary force and their allied Arab militias rampaged through a town in Sudan's war-ravaged region of Darfur, reportedly killing more than 800 people in a multiday attack, doctors and the U.N. said.

The attack on Ardamata in West Darfur province earlier this month was the latest in a series of atrocities in Darfur that marked the monthslong war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, RSF.

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The Darfur Bar Association, an advocacy group, accused RSF fighters of committing "all types of serious violations against defenseless civilians" in Ardamata. It cited an attack on Nov. 6 during which the RSF killed more than 50 people including a tribal leader and his family.

The UNHCR said more than 800 people have been reportedly killed and 8,000 others fled to neighboring Chad. The agency, however, said the number of people who fled was likely to be an underestimate due to challenges registering new arrivals to Chad."

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/12/12125246 ... -the-un-sa

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Ghana Reparations Summit Calls for Global Fund to Compensate Africans for Slave Trade
November 16, 2023

Introduction:

ACCRA, Ghana (AP via Courthouse News) — Delegates at a reparations summit in Ghana agreed Thursday to establish a Global Reparation Fund to push for overdue compensation for millions of Africans enslaved centuries ago during the transatlantic slave trade.

The Accra Reparation Conference adds to the growing demands for reparations after about 12 million Africans were forcefully taken by European nations from the 16th to the 19th century and enslaved on plantations that built wealth at the price of misery.

Centuries after the end of the slave trade, people of African descent around the world continue “to be victims of systemic racial discrimination and racialized attacks,” concluded a recent report by a special U.N. forum which supported reparations as “a cornerstone of justice in the 21st century.”

“It is time for Africa — whose sons and daughters had their freedoms controlled and sold into slavery — to also receive reparations,” said Ghana’s President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo at the conference, attended by senior government officials from across Africa as well as the diaspora community.

Slave reparations have become an issue the world “must confront and can no longer ignore,” said Akufo-Addo, calling out the British and other European nations who enriched themselves during the slave trade while “enslaved Africans themselves did not receive a penny.”

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/ghana-r ... e-trade/

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Sierra Leone Government Declares Curfew After Repelling a Barracks Attack
November 26, 2023

Introduction:

(DW via MSN) Sierra Leone's government said on Sunday that unidentified gunmen attacked a military barracks and tried to break into an armory at the site in the capital, Freetown.

"In the early hours of Sunday, some unidentified individuals attempted to break into the military armory at the Wilberforce barracks. They have been rebuffed," Information Minister Chernor Bah said in the statement.

The government said security forces were again in control of the situation but it nevertheless said it was issuing stay-at-home orders across the country.
"A nationwide curfew has been declared with immediate effect ... We strongly advise citizens to stay indoors," the statement said.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/s ... snnews11


Sierra Leone

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The Lifting of The Arms Embargo On Somalia

(Namibia Press Agency via MSN) Somalia's president welcomed yesterday's decision by the UN Security Council to fully lift an arms embargo on the Somalian government while maintaining a ban on sales to the country's Islamist militants.The United Nations in 1992 imposed an embargo on all arms deliveries to Somalia, though in recent years the Security Council has eased restrictions on sales to the central government.'From now on, our country is free to purchase any sort of weapon we want from the world,' Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in a declaration late yesterday. 'Weapons in government hands will not pose a threat to our people and the world.'Friday's UN decision maintained the embargo on supplying weapons to the Islamist Al-Shabaab and other rebel groups.'

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/r ... lia-oped/

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The Lifting of the Arms Embargo on Somalia - Continued

What follows is from an analysis by Dr. Suleiman Walhad published December 4, 2023:
Introduction:

(Eurasia Review) The Somali State is a construct of the Somali people who have lived in this important and prominent part of the African continent for thousands of years and from which they spread to other parts and still continue to do so to this day. This peninsula was not as parched as it looks today. It was a leopard-colored landscape of patches of forests, savannah and mountains bounded by a long coast from Bab El Mandab to the River Tana Estuary in Kenya. Europeans have reshaped it in their own fashion towards the end of the nineteenth century to create the current construct, although Somalis corrected it partially when the Ex-British Somaliland Protectorate and the Italian administered UN Trust Territory of Somalia got their independence and united to create the present Somali state in 1960. This is what the world today knows as the Somali state, but Somalis have a different definition of the Somali state for in their mindset, the Somali state still consists of the country of Djibouti, the eastern third of Ethiopia and the northern third of present-day Kenya.

Further Extract:

The lifting of the arms embargo from Somalia is momentous and significant in the recovery march of the country. It not only strengthens the country’s national forces but also sends a strong message to the enemies of the nation both from within and from without that the game has changed. The lifting of the arms embargo indicates that Somalia is no longer alone, and the world’s major powers are showing their confidence in the federal government of Somalia’s growing ability to manage its own security affairs. We should remember that the embargo has been in place since 1992, almost a third of a century during which the country was unable to raise its army and national security services, and indeed, raise its head up.

Read more here: https://www.eurasiareview.com/0412202 ... lia-oped/


Somalia

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Somalia officially admitted into EAC

Friday November 24 2023

Somalia has been admitted as the eighth member of the East African Community on Friday November 24, 2023, just over a year after the latest entrant, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was admitted into the bloc.

Mogadishu’s admission into the bloc was approved by the region’s leaders during the 23rd ordinary summit of the heads of state held in Arusha, Tanzania, on the same day, after successful negotiations that lasted close to a year.

The outgoing chairperson, Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye said the heads of state agreed to formally admit Somalia into the bloc, after the lengthy closed-door meeting which lasted more than five hours.

Somalia first expressed interest in joining the EAC in 2012 but was turned down due to its internal troubles with Al Shabaab and lack of a stable legal and political environment at the time.

However, Mogadishu’s hopes of joining the regional bloc were rekindled when equally troubled South Sudan was admitted in 2016, and later DRC, which also has multiple conflicts within its borders, in 2022.

https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/ne ... ac-4444168

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Diaspora Communities Improve Lives in Africa with Remittances, but Sometimes That Comes at Great Personal Cost
by Anthony Akaeze
December 24, 2023

Introduction:

(Baptist News Global) In this season of giving, some African expatriates are weary of being asked for financial assistance from people who assume they’ve got money to spare.

One such person is Asisat Oshoala, a Nigerian soccer star based in Barcelona, Spain. In a recent Snapchat post, she gave a stinging rebuke to people who pester her with demands for assistance. Her post elicited diverse comments on social media and was published by Pulse, a lifestyle and entertainment medium.

Oshoala is a six-time African footballer of the year who boasts a massive social media following. She expressed frustration with those who ask her to contribute to their various needs, such as when a baby is born or a wedding is planned.

Oshoala is not the only African diaspora member who’s irritated by excessive financial demands from people in her home country. Many other Africans in different parts of the world feel similar pressure. In fact, it’s one issue members of the African diaspora communities across the world grapple with on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

While assisting family members and friends back on the continent is something many African immigrants are drawn to do because of their knowledge of the socio-economic conditions there, many find the engagement overwhelming, frustrating and annoying, particularly when they themselves are not finding life easy abroad.

Read more here: https://baptistnews.com/article/author ... y-akaeze/