Musings From Abroad

Brazil’s Embraer to invest in Morocco’s aerospace sector

Published

1 month ago

November 1, 2024

Morocco’s industry ministry has announced that Brazilian aircraft manufacturer, Embraer, has reached an initial agreement to invest in the country’s defence and civilian aerospace sectors, including the establishment of a maintenance and repair facility.

According to a Moroccan industry insider who asked to remain anonymous, Embraer’s prospects of obtaining a piece of a recent plane acquisition tender issued by Moroccan airline RAM are expected to increase with the new maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility.

At the opening of the Marrakech Air Show, where the Embraer transaction was finalised, RAM CEO Abdelhamid Addou stated that the company intends to quadruple its fleet to 200 within the next 14 years to solidify its position as a carrier connecting Africa to Europe and the Americas.

Safran, a manufacturer of aircraft engines, and the Moroccan government inked an agreement Monday to construct an MRO plant valued at 130 million euros ($141.14 million).

To emulate its success in auto production, Morocco’s government has recently promoted aerospace suppliers to invest in the nation by establishing hubs to streamline supply chains and exchange knowledge.

With $2.2 billion in exports last year, the nation’s 147 aerospace industrial units produce everything from cables to sophisticated engine parts, supplying international giants like Boeing and Airbus.

Related Topics:Brazil Brazil's Embraer Featured Morocco

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Musings From Abroad

French army begins Chad pullout

Published

2 days ago

December 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Just two weeks after local authorities said they were terminating their defence collaboration, the French army announced that jets deployed in the capital N’Djamena had returned home on Tuesday, marking the beginning of France’s military departure from Chad.

The government of Chad, a crucial Western partner in the war against Islamic jihadists in the area, unexpectedly terminated its defence cooperation treaty with France on November 28, a decision that caught French authorities off guard.

It is still unclear how the evacuation will be executed and if any French forces will remain in the central African country at all, even after the first Mirage aircraft returned to their base in eastern France on Tuesday.

“It marks the beginning of the return of French equipment stationed in N’Djamena,” Army spokesperson Colonel Guillaume Vernet said.

Due to anti-French sentiment and military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, France has already withdrawn its troops from those West African nations.

Decades of French military participation in the Sahel area came to an end with the departure from Chad, and more recently, French military operations against Islamist extremists in the region were discontinued.

There are still around 1,000 French soldiers in Chad. Vernet stated that it would still take several weeks for the two nations to establish a schedule for reducing its activities.

Musings From Abroad

Court documents show Meta contractor overlooked Ethiopia rebel threats to moderators

Published

2 days ago

December 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

New evidence cited by Reuters suggests that a contractor employed by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, overlooked threats against content moderators by Ethiopian rebels during a case contesting the removal of dozens of moderators in Kenya.

Last year, 185 content moderators sued Meta and two contractors for losing their positions with Sama, a Kenyan business that moderated Facebook material, for seeking to form a union.

After Facebook switched contractors, they were barred from applying for the same jobs at Majorel.

Foxglove, a British non-profit helping Ethiopian moderators, submitted court filings on Dec. 4 alleging that Sama ignored their accusations that OLA rebels had targeted them for deleting their videos.

In the petition obtained by Reuters, the moderators said Sama accused them “of creating a false account and manufacturing” the threatening messages before agreeing to a probe and transferring one of the rebels’ officially named moderators to a safe house.

In his statement, Moderator Abdikadir Alio Guyo said that OLA had threatened “content moderators who were constantly pulling down their graphic Facebook Posts.”

“They told us to stop removing their content from Facebook or else we would face dire consequences,” he said, adding that his supervisor dismissed his concerns.
In his declaration, another moderator, Hamza Diba Tubi, stated that OLA sent him a message with the names and addresses of both himself and his coworkers.

“Since I received that threatening message, I have lived in so much fear of even visiting my family members in Ethiopia,” he said.

After peace negotiations in Tanzania in 2023 failed to end a decades-old conflict, the government of Oromiya, Ethiopia’s biggest province, accused OLA rebels of killing “many civilians” in assaults.