Musings From Abroad

Biden to commemorate US-Angola slave trade

Published

1 week ago

December 3, 2024

As the first American president to visit the sub-Saharan African nation, Joe Biden will use his Tuesday visit to commemorate the two countries’ historical involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

Biden will give a speech at the National Museum of Slavery in Luanda, which has the church from the 17th century where slaves were baptised under duress before being sent in chains to the Americas.

In all, 4 million Angolans were forcefully transported to the Americas, primarily to Brazil but also to the present-day United States, after the first Africans arrived in the British colony of Virginia in 1619 and were seized in Angola.

Wanda Tucker, a Black American who can trace her heritage to Angolans who were sent to what is now Hampton, Virginia, is anticipated to be among Biden’s audience in Luanda.

One of the biggest enslavers on the African coast formerly owned the museum where he would talk. Shackles and iron weights are among the items that are still visible inside that were used to torment and punish slaves.

The repair of the structure will be aided by a $229,000 grant announced by the United States.

Biden’s trip to Angola will also highlight a significant railway project supported by the United States that seeks to divert vital minerals from China. In what may be his last international journey before he leaves office in January, it fulfils a pledge to travel to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Washington is slowly re-establishing relations with a strategically important nation with which it was previously at odds by investing millions of dollars in Angola.

According to White House sources, Biden will discuss security and trade cooperation with Joao Lourenco, the president of Angola, when they meet on Tuesday.

Next year, Angola and the United States will meet to discuss defence cooperation in the areas of cyber and maritime security.

Related Topics:Africa Featured Ghana President Joe Biden

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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

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.