Musings From Abroad

Days after announcing plan to review African relations, French officials in Niger for talks

Published

2 years ago

July 16, 2022

Despite announcement that it planned to review its policy with relations to Africa, France’s foreign and military ministers are on official visit to to Niger.

Head of French diplomacy, Catherine Colonna and Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu are due to hold talks with their Nigerian counterparts on Friday morning, before meeting President Mohamed Bazoum.

A French diplomatic source revealed that the objective of the joint trip is to “embody the civil-military binomial”, and to “show that our approach rests on its two feet.”

France has had its relationship with some African countries turn sour lately with recent anti-French protests in some parts of the continent. The government in Gabon was forced to stop planned protest in May. There were also pockets of “anti-French” protests in South Africa in the month.

The challenge notwithstanding, France is continuing its cooperation with neighbouring Niger, where it will maintain more than a thousand men and air capabilities to provide fire support and intelligence to the Nigerien armies as part of a “combat partnership”.

Recall that Mali’s ruling military junta in May announced that the country would, broke defence ties with her former colonial rulers, France, citing “flagrant violations” of its national sovereignty bu French troops based in the West African country.

Colonna stated earlier in the week before the National Assembly that Paris’ worry about growth on civil government in Africa is more its diplomatic break up with Mali.

“Beyond Mali, the decline in democracy in West Africa is extremely worrying, with successive putsches in Mali twice, in Guinea in September 2021, in Burkina Faso in January this year,” but “France will nevertheless continue, despite these events, this withdrawal from Mali, to help the West African armies to fight against terrorist groups,”

“We are currently holding consultations with our partners concerned to define with them, according to their requests and needs, the nature of the support we can provide,” she explained.

France and Niger historically have strong relations. The two countries are linked through many agreements, in the areas of cultural, legal and defence cooperation. There is much high-level contact between political leaders and regular bilateral visits.

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Musings From Abroad

UN Security Council deliberates stance on Sudan war

Published

1 day ago

November 13, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

The UN Security Council is discussing a British-drafted resolution calling on Sudan’s warring parties to stop hostilities and permit safe, quick, and unimpeded assistance supplies across borders and front lines.

The world’s largest relocation crisis began in April 2023 when the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces engaged in a power battle ahead of a planned transfer to civilian administration.

Waves of ethnically motivated violence have resulted, with the RSF mostly to blame. The RSF has blamed the action on rogue actors and denies causing harm to civilians in Sudan. Two RSF generals were named last week by a Security Council committee in the first U.N. sanctions levied during the ongoing conflict.

“Nineteen months into the war, both sides are committing egregious human rights violations, including the widespread rape of women and girls,” Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, told reporters at the start of this month as Britain assumed the Security Council’s presidency for November.

“More than half the Sudanese population are experiencing severe food insecurity,” she said. “Despite this, the SAF and the RSF remain focussed on fighting each other and not the famine and suffering facing their country.”

According to diplomats, Britain wants to vote on the draft resolution as soon as possible. A resolution must receive nine votes or more to pass and not be vetoed by the United States, France, Britain, Russia, or China.

Nearly 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require aid, according to the U.N., since 11 million people have abandoned their homes and famine has spread to displacement camps. Of those, around 3 million have departed for other nations.

In its draft language, Britain “demands that the warring parties immediately cease hostilities” and “demands that the Rapid Support Forces immediately halt its offensives” throughout Sudan.

It also “calls on the parties to the conflict to allow and facilitate the full, safe, rapid, and unhindered crossline and cross-border humanitarian access into and throughout Sudan.”

Additionally, the draft urges that assistance deliveries continue to be made through the Adre border crossing with Chad “and stresses the need to sustain humanitarian access through all border crossings, while humanitarian needs persist, and without impediments.”

Sudanese authorities have permitted the U.N. and relief organisations to enter Darfur through the Adre border crossing for three months, ending in mid-November.

Musings From Abroad

South Africa worry Trump’s victory might affect climate fight

Published

4 days ago

November 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

South Africa’s environment minister has expressed concern about the potential effects of Donald Trump’s victory on climate change negotiations.

The demise of Germany’s coalition government this week and Trump’s election coincide with COP29 negotiations to address global warming, which experts credit for this year’s devastating hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves.

“We are concerned about America because we don’t know what they’re going to do … how (it) is going to approach COP,” South African Environment Minister Dion George told Reuters.

“Mr. Trump said that he would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, but we don’t know what will happen,” George added in a telephone interview on Friday.

International partners are concerned that the prospect of an administration led by Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, will de-motivate poor and middle-income countries who want rich nations to shoulder more of its financial burden.

South Africa, which is one of the world’s top 15 greenhouse gas emitters and accounts for 30% of the continent’s emissions, has accepted $11.6 billion from rich nations, mainly in loans, for a switch from coal to renewable energy.

This is seen as a potential model for other ‘Global South’ countries who say financing pledges of $100 billion, which took years to come through, are insufficient.

“It’s certainly not enough. We need another target,” George said. “But then the question is: as the voter base is shifting in developed economies, are they actually going to pay it?”

The South African minister said he had been reassured by German officials that Europe’s stance at the COP29 climate talks will not be hurt by Berlin’s political crisis.

George said that Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s state secretary for international climate action, had contacted him to say it will be up to the European Union to maintain leadership.

“Their position is not changed and that is how they will approach COP,” George said, adding: “They’re on Team Europe. The European Union and German have clearly set out their objectives.”