Musings From Abroad

Angolan coast of Lobito hosts Biden to promote railway development

Published

1 week ago

December 4, 2024

On the final day of his ongoing African tour, U.S. President, Joe Biden, landed in the coastal city of Lobito, Angola, on Wednesday to promote a plan to build a railway that would transport vital minerals from the Congo to the West.

The project, which includes the first phase of renovating an existing railway through Angola and expanding it into Congo’s mining heartland, has been financed by a $550 million loan from the United States. It has not yet been allocated a completion date.

Connecting and expanding the Lobito corridor into Tanzania is the goal of the project’s second phase. Feasibility studies have been supported by the United States, but opponents claim the project will be undermined since it will provide a competing eastward route to China.

Washington is anticipated to adopt a more aggressive stance towards China following Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States in January. The future of U.S. backing for the eastern route has been questioned by certain authorities.

This week, U.S. authorities announced $600 million in funding through the Development Finance Corporation for first-phase projects in the fields of telecommunications, mining, and solar.

During his first and only trip to Africa as president, Biden met with his Angolan counterpart Joao Lourenco in Luanda on Tuesday and promised to continue U.S. involvement with Africa on its terms. Only weeks before his presidency ends, the trip fulfils a pledge to travel to the continent.

U.S. influence in Africa has decreased over Biden’s tenure in office, despite his repeated promises to go “all in on Africa.”

China’s hold over resources deemed vital to national security has been tightened, while the United States has lost a military facility in the Sahel.

Though it has recently shifted towards the West, Angola has traditionally maintained strong connections with China and Russia.

During Biden’s visit on Tuesday, the president of Angola stated that the country wishes to increase its cooperation with the United States on military and security projects.

In its assessment of a rapidly evolving continent that is becoming more aligned with China and Russia and under threat from Islamist insurgencies, the next Trump administration will need to address blind spots.

Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil (MOTA.LS), international commodities trader Trafigura, and railway operator Vecturis support the Lobito project.

The $550 million loan from the U.S. Development Finance Corporation will be used to renovate the 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) rail system that connects Lobito and Congo.

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Musings From Abroad

French army begins Chad pullout

Published

1 day 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

1 day 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.